


The Arrangement

by fio



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Reality, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arranged Marriage, Blade of Marmora Keith (Voltron), Galra Keith (Voltron), M/M, Misunderstandings, Oblivious Shiro (Voltron), Pining Keith (Voltron), Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-11 21:04:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13532511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fio/pseuds/fio
Summary: An incomplete Voltron team is saved by the Marmora when one of its members proves to be the only pilot the Red Lion will accept. Tradition dictates that for an alliance to be formed, two parties of equal standing marry and Shiro winds up taking the hit for the team.It might not be so bad, if only Shiro could figure out if his new alien spouse really wanted him for a husband.





	The Arrangement

**Author's Note:**

> a very late secret santa gift for ofdiamantes on tumblr. hope you had a wonderful holiday season and start to your new year!

They were losing. 

Battle after battle, monster after monster, every run in they had with Zarkon and his forces, they were forced to retreat or die. Their only successes had been getting the lions, but that felt more like a stroke of unimaginable luck that they'd never have again, and no matter where they went or who they brought to it, the Red Lion would accept no pilot. The war Shiro had found himself stuck in was a losing one, and he saw little hope of it changing.

He couldn't see a chance of winning this battle either, a sudden clash with a cruiser of Zarkon's army that had caught them by surprise. He heard Allura's orders and the rest of the team's shouts of positioning and incoming fighters as they tried to deal with the lead ship, but there were too many. They wouldn't make it out of this.

The Black Lion roared as it got hit again, the controls failed and Shiro was rocketed out of his seat, slamming into the roof of the cockpit. He groaned, half-conscious, and tried to move, but for a moment he wondered if it was even worth it. 

But the shouts over the radio in his helmet began to change. Frantic desperation was replaced by confusion and, very rapidly, relief as Shiro squeezed his eyes shut and tried to focus, wanting to understand the words.

"They aren't with Zarkon! They're attacking Zarkon's ships!"

"It's not enough, they can't get rid of them all—" 

"But it's enough to let us get out of here!"

"Wait, Shiro's not answering— Where's— "

A roar, new and ferocious, drowned out the rest of the voices coming in over the radio as something took hold of the Black Lion and tugged, pulling it out of the action. Shiro wasn't sure who it was but he knew they were taking him back to the Castle of Lions. As he started to pass out, his body's adrenaline evaporating, he thought he heard someone call out to him, demanding he stay alive.

 _I will_ , he tried to answer. But all he could do was grunt and reach forward, catching sight of something red outside his lion's display just before his vision went black.

***

"When I said I'd do whatever I can to help, I didn't mean to agree to this," Shiro hissed as Coran fitted him with the various ceremonial robes and accessories required for today's meeting.

He felt unbalanced, weighed down by heavy Altean jewelry and fabrics, and it made him anxious. He'd spent the last few weeks wearing his paladin armor most of the time and he'd grown accustomed to it, the flexibility and freedom it gave him to move, to fight, and to feel protected. Under all these decorative pieces he felt more like the prisoner he'd been for too long, trapped and forced into helplessness, and it made him radiate unease no matter how much he tried to hide it.

"Well, it's either you or Allura and we can't have the last Altean marry a Galra, as important as the Marmora's alliance is to our cause."

"Why not?" Shiro asked, a bit flippantly. He was struggling to be cooperative about this, but he'd thought he'd already given his all to team Voltron. He didn't know what to do now that they were asking for something like this.

"Because..."

Coran paused, adjusting a piece on Shiro's chest—a golden brooch of some alien animal. Shiro glanced down at it with distaste. The animal looked like a miserable rodent, which didn't help with the way he felt about being used for this. Coran gave Shiro's shoulders a sympathetic pat once he was satisfied.

"Because we can't have word getting out that the Princess has married a Galra when most of the universe thinks that means Zarkon. It's unfair, but true."

"Then why am _I_ marrying one?" Shiro pressed, shifting uncomfortably. 

"The Marmora are using us to rehabilitate their people's image while we use them for their inside knowledge of the empire's plans and technology, and both our teams aim to overthrow Zarkon for good. A literal marriage between us will help solidify the alliance, but it has to involve someone important to both causes. So, since it can't be Allura, that leaves you."

Shiro grimaced, feeling far from flattered.

"Well, let's get a move on. Don't want to be late for your big day!" Coran said with a cheerful enthusiasm that Shiro failed to reciprocate.

***

The wedding ceremony was a short, small affair, far from what Shiro imagined when he first heard the plan, but he was almost grateful for it. _Almost_.

They all gathered at the private meeting spot, a tiny glade on an agreed upon neutral planet where two of their shuttles could land and stay hidden. Kolivan had arrived with another of his generals and a young Galra who stayed silent and refused to remove his mask. While Shiro felt like he'd been primped and prepared like a show dog for a competition, his future spouse wore the same sleek but simple Marmora uniform as the rest of their forces. The two Marmora warriors stood behind the much smaller Galra and Allura and Coran stood behind Shiro, the rest of the paladins not allowed to attend, and finally a neon-colored alien dressed in shimmery fabrics joined them. Shiro correctly guessed that they were the space equivalent of a judge back on Earth, here to perform the rites and bind them together in marriage.

The words of the judge floated in one ear and out the other as Shiro stood in silence through the quick ceremony. He couldn't take his eyes off the blank mask of his future partner, his stomach churning with too many emotions to make heads or tails of most of them, other than a heavy feeling of dread.

Shiro had been the only one to really trust the Marmora—Ulaz had helped him escape the Galra prison, another Marmora agent had helped him escape the Garrison, and others still had aided a team Voltron who hadn't been able to successfully summon Voltron yet—because fighting alongside them was simple. They wanted to get rid of Zarkon just like everyone else and Shiro didn't see any reason to doubt them when they needed all the help they could get. 

But what was a marriage to one of them going to be like? Would they be spending time together, or avoid each other at all times? Would he ever see the face of his spouse or hear them speak? Did he _want_ to?

He felt almost nauseous with the number of questions and doubts spinning around in his head and as tried to breathe and keep himself calm, he nearly missed the judge calling him.

"W-What?" Shiro sputtered, whipping his head up.

"Black Paladin of Voltron. What is your name?"

"Shiro," he answered. A few beats of silence passed before he realized the judge wanted his whole name. "Uh. It's Takashi Shirogane."

The judge nodded, then turned to the masked Galra. "And yours, young Blade of Marmora?"

"Keith Kogane," a voice, steadier than Shiro's, replied.

It wasn't like any Galra name that Shiro had ever heard. It was a _human_ name. He wanted to ask, to pull off that mask and see who the hell he was about to be bound to, but the judge continued on, taking a hand from each of them. With Shiro's left and the Galra's right hand pressed flat against each other, the judge dragged a repetitive pattern across Shiro's human knuckles and left a luminescent marking before turning their hands over and doing the same across the back of the Galra's gloved knuckles. The marking disappeared after a few moments and Shiro flexed his fingers, wondering if the Galra—Keith—felt it as well. 

The new, strange warmth of a name etched across his bones.

"You are bonded. May the life and love between you now written across your atoms burn as bright as the stars they formed in."

And with that, the judge released their hands and nodded to the others, then promptly left. Shiro was stuck staring at his human hand, stretching it against the bizarre sensation that was pleasant and warm but was also beginning to make him feel sore and brittle, the anxious nausea he'd been distracted from now coming back full force.

Everyone else seemed to be ignoring him, Allura and Kolivan speaking in hushed tones as they led Keith back towards the shuttles that would take them back to the Castle of Lions. Shiro tried to chase after them, wanting some answers, but he'd forgotten he was weighed down by unfamiliar Altean dress robes and, already unbalanced from his nausea, he wound up tripping and falling forward onto the fresh grass of the glade. He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe deep, trying to push himself up off the ground, when a hand appeared in front of his face.

Looking up, the blankness of a Marmora mask greeted him. His eyes dropped back to the gloved hand being offered to him and he took it, letting Keith pull him onto his feet.

"Thanks..." Shiro said, still feeling unsteady.

"Keith. We must hurry," Kolivan called from the shuttles. Keith stood motionless for a few moments longer and Shiro felt like he was being examined from behind that mask before Keith turned to join Kolivan and the others.

"Wait—" Shiro hissed, reaching for Keith and catching him by the wrist, jerking him to a halt. "Are you human? Your name— I don't understand—"

"Later," Keith whispered and Shiro reluctantly let him go.

Coran jogged over as Keith walked past him and Shiro remembered that he'd fallen over and probably stained the robes. Before he could apologize, Coran waved him off and took him by the elbow to help walk him back to their shuttle.

"Not to fret, a quick wash and they'll be good as new. But are you feeling all right? You've been looking a bit out of sorts since we got here."

Shiro opened his mouth to answer but paused, frowning instead. He stared down at his fingers again in bewilderment, his overwhelming stress reduced to a warm and pleasant squeezing where Keith's hand had been.

***

Married life wasn't all that different from single life, Shiro discovered. Or at least it wasn't during a giant space war when he was too busy in strategy meetings to even think about his new husband. A husband who, after a brief visit to the Castle of Lions and the lion hanger with Allura, had returned to the Marmora's ship without greeting him or anyone else and had yet to come back. Not even when it was announced to the paladins that they'd finally found a pilot for the Red Lion, and that it would be Keith.

Despite the rest of the team's unease with the Marmora, there was a tangible ripple of relief between them when they heard the news. If they had a red paladin, they'd be able to form Voltron, and maybe things would finally start going their way for once. Allura was the most conflicted about the idea—a Galra warrior in her father's lion, who had rejected her every time she desperately pleaded with it to let her fight—but she couldn't deny that Voltron was more important than anyone's personal feelings, including her own.

The only problem was Keith continued to be absent and nobody was giving Shiro any answers why.

"What's this guy like?" Pidge asked. They'd gathered in the lion hangar to do team exercises, Coran and Allura wanting them prepared for their first attempt at forming Voltron. 

"I don't know. I think I exchanged maybe ten words with him."

"What was kissing him like? Do Galra even have lips?" Hunk asked, using his fingers to trace around his mouth as he thought about it.

"Uh. We didn't. Space marriage ceremonies don't do that part, apparently."

"But did he have any lips, though?"

"I... have no idea. He wouldn't take his mask off."

"I bet it was a fluke the first time Red here let him pilot it. That's why he won't come back," Lance said, staring up at the dead-eyed lion. Shiro shot him a sharp look.

"They wouldn't have agreed to this alliance on a fluke," Shiro said flatly, though he knew he sounded more wishful than certain. He just didn't want to believe he'd been used for nothing. But snappy as his response was, he appreciated Lance moving the subject away from his husband and what kissing they did or did not do.

"You don't think they'll need us all to marry someone from every alliance we have to make, do you?" Pidge asked, looking a bit green in the face.

"All ladies are beautiful ladies, I'd be happy to marry any for the cause," Lance said, licking a finger and dragging it across his eyebrows to make sure they were even before striking what he must've considered a dashing pose. Hunk and Pidge immediately rolled their eyes and pointed out that half the aliens they met weren't either men _or_ ladies and he could wind up marrying a space amoeba.

Shiro didn't pay attention to whatever Lance's rebuttal was, his focus lingering on the inactive Red Lion.

He'd been unconscious when it had flown for the first time just to come save him and pull the Black Lion back to the castle ship, and now it looked just as dead as it had since they barely managed to steal it from Zarkon's possession. But something in him _knew_ it was ready to join the fight now, the same way something in him always knew what the Black Lion was saying when it communicated with him.

At the time it was happening, he hadn't understood why Keith was the one chosen from the Marmora to take part in the marriage ceremony—he'd barely understood the reason for being chosen himself—but looking at the lion that had accepted Keith, the first to pilot it in ten thousand years, now he knew. And it eased the disquiet he'd been feeling about the arrangement. He didn't know what to do with an alien spouse, but a teammate in this war he still wasn't sure they could win was more than welcome.

Shiro's fingers pulsed with a sudden warmth and he squeezed his fist against it, just as the eyes of the Red Lion lit up and it roared, interrupting and startling the other paladins into falling over.

A door opened and Shiro turned as Hunk and the others looked up from where they were sprawled on top of each other in a clumsy pile to see Allura leading Keith, still in his Marmora suit and mask, towards them.

"Paladins of Voltron," she greeted, her eyes darting to Keith for a moment with a flashing look of distaste, "It's time you began your training."

As the paladins on the floor scrambled to their feet, Shiro found himself reaching forward and gently tugging at Keith's hand as he walked by. Keith froze, his mask showing nothing.

"It's good to have you here with us," Shiro said, wanting him to feel welcomed. He didn't know what kind of response to expect from his new husband, but when all he got was silence he let his hand fall away. He just hoped Keith believed he was being genuine as he turned his attention to Allura and waited for her instructions.

***

"Look, will you take off the mask? This is getting ridiculous."

"No."

Lance tossed his hands in the air and looked to Shiro, exasperated. "Shiro, you're the leader, you make him do it!"

"I'm not going to _make_ anyone do anything, Lance." 

"But Kolivan doesn't wear his around us anymore as a sign of trust, right?" Pidge pointed out, adjusting the reader on her head. "You're our teammate now, why can't you take it off?"

"I'm about to let you all rummage around in my head. Is that not trustworthy enough?" Keith asked angrily. Despite the constant blankness of his mask, it could do little to hide his moods when he spoke to the others. Mostly he'd just sounded varying degrees of frustrated and annoyed so far.

"C'mon, everybody, let's just focus and give this a try," Shiro said, trying his best to keep everybody calm.

He was feeling a lot of frustration himself. All of their team exercises and attempts at forming Voltron so far had found no success. Whatever hopes Keith had brought them as the red paladin they needed were fading fast and the bitterness of failing again and again was starting to take its toll. He didn't know why Keith stubbornly refused to change into the paladin armor or take off his mask either, but Keith had a point. He was cooperative with everything else Allura, Coran and the other paladins asked him to do. They could put up with an enigmatic teammate if they had to, as long as they could get _some_ kind of victory out of all this practice.

Once everyone quieted down the exercise began, but the sensation of four other minds floating through his own was uncomfortable in a bizarre way. It was a struggle to focus on his lion like Coran instructed when he felt such an intense need to shield himself from clawing hands grabbing at his memories curiously, though the feeling was closer to seaweed catching on his leg while he tried to keep his head above water. The hands didn't grab at him for very long though and he felt his own mind being pulled along like it was trapped in a current, curiosity driving everyone towards one person's thoughts in particular. All he could see was a Marmora mask as it split into thousands upon thousands, the same blank mask that hid every member of the Galra rebel militia. Even in his head, Keith seemed to be determined to close himself off to the others despite his protests otherwise.

"Focus, everybody. Lions! Think of your lions!" Coran called out.

The current abruptly came to a stop and Shiro's vision behind his closed eyes became clearer, the Black Lion taking shape. He could feel the others starting to form as well, though the Red and Green Lions were weaker, flickering in and out of sight.

"Hunk, quit it," Shiro heard Pidge whispering.

"What? She's cute—" 

" _Quit it_!"

"Concentrate!" Coran instructed again. "That's it, feel your lions, reach out to your fellow paladins, bring yourselves together... Thaaat's it, you're getting there!"

Their lions were moving closer, and with them, the other's thoughts. Shiro could feel—and hear, and see, and taste—memories washing over him like waves. Beloved family at a beach, celebrating a holiday; friends sneaking inside a cafeteria kitchen on a snowy day to make s'mores; a devastating loss as familiar names scrolled across the news alongside the words _Assumed Dead_ ; a quiet, dark room with a faded photograph in hand, of a shack and a man standing proudly in front of it despite looking empty and abandoned, a feeling of fierce loneliness growing stronger with every moment.

Shiro didn't know what memories of his own were slipping out of him and towards the others, but he tried not to think about it. He wanted to focus, but it was hard when the strong image of the shack kept popping in and out of sight and he slowly started to realize he recognized it. The Marmora agent who'd broken him out of the Garrison when they recovered his escape pod had taken him there, he was sure of it.

The uncomfortable feeling of loose fingers like seaweed on his thoughts suddenly turned hard and constricting and he inhaled in shock.

"Wait, don't," he whispered, not sure who he was talking to.

The fingers didn't listen, grabbing at him and ripping him open as they reached for his thoughts of the shack, of the Galra woman who'd saved him, but they were careless about what else they dragged through. They pulled at horrors and pain and things even he'd forgotten, buried away either on purpose or unconsciously out of self-preservation. The current he'd felt swept away by before was now swirling around him and pulling him down like a riptide, drowning him quickly.

" _Stop_!" he shouted, his eyes slamming open as he tossed the reading device off his head and fell forward to cough violently, his mind still swirling and his lungs not sure what they were breathing.

"I'm sorry— Shiro, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—" 

"What happened? I didn't feel anything."

"Did you do something to him on purpose?"

"No!"

"Coran, is he gonna be okay?"

"He's going to be fine, just give him a bit of room now!"

Shiro wasn't sure who was talking, everyone's voices overlapping as Coran rushed down into the room and gently rubbed at Shiro's back.

"I'm fine," he tried to call out as the others talked over each other, slowly easing back upright, "Really, I'm fine. I just need a minute."

The room only went quiet when he got to his feet, but his stomach turned unpleasantly at the worried, questioning looks everyone was pointing at him. They hadn't realized—or didn't understand—what his memories were full of before this exercise, and maybe they still didn't. But even the blank Marmora mask that looked back at him seemed to be pitying him and he immediately turned away, irritated.

"I need some air. You can try it again without me."

He left the room in a rush, not sure where he was going. He didn't make it very far before the sound of footsteps following after him made him turn around.

"Keith, please—" Shiro started with a sigh. He wanted space and some time to slip back on the mask of a leader who had everything, especially himself, under control before returning to the others. If anyone could understand that, he thought it'd be Keith.

"You met my mother," Keith interrupted, his head dipped down like he was staring at their feet. "She's been on Earth since before I was born, stationed there to guard the Blue Lion, but I didn't— I've never—" 

He went silent and Shiro watched him, a confused frown settling on his face. It wasn't hard to gauge what Keith was feeling, the shakiness of his voice and trembling of his shoulders more than enough to show it. But it was jarring, especially after such an uncomfortably intimate exchange when their minds had been connected, to hear Keith open up while keeping his face hidden.

Shiro and the other paladins were learning things about Keith quickly— he was serious and dedicated, with a bit of a short fuse— but they still didn't _know_ him.

"Keith," Shiro said again.

Keith brought his face upwards, his tone sounding rehearsed and detached, as if he was used to being forced to apologize as he said, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have let myself get distracted enough to hurt you like that."

"I'm not hurt, just a little shaken," Shiro said quickly, reaching a hand forward and tentatively placing it on Keith's shoulder. When he didn't recoil or brush it off, Shiro squeezed gently and it made his fingers pulse with the new warmth he sometimes felt, and he briefly wondered if Keith ever felt it too. "I'm not mad either, but I appreciate the apology. It's not really your fault, though, I don't think I was as prepared for it as I told myself I was. I've never done anything like that before."

Keith nodded, his body language still radiating guilt. This time when he spoke, his voice was soft and genuine. "I haven't either. I wasn't ready to see—... I'm sorry."

Shiro let his hand fall away and thought for a moment.

"Can I ask why you won't take off your mask?"

He saw Keith immediately tense, his shoulders hiking upwards and his hands squeezing at his sides.

"I won't make you take it off, and you don't have to answer me," Shiro clarified, "but Pidge had a point back there. I can tell you care about what we think—you wouldn't have chased me down to apologize if you didn't—so I'm going to be honest. It's hard to think of you as more than a stranger when you keep yourself hidden like that. What we need is a teammate. What we _want_ is someone we can trust. And we want to be that for you, too, Keith."

Keith didn't respond, and with his face covered, Shiro couldn't tell what his reaction was to his advice. But his shoulders were relaxing, and that at least gave Shiro some confidence that he was getting through to him.

"I'm ready to be whatever you need to help you get adjusted here, and I know you're doing your best to work with us, too. But is it too much to ask that you show us something, _anything_ to better know who you are?"

He hoped he wasn't pushing too hard, but a thunderous rumble that shook the castle and Allura's voice sounding through the castle grabbed their attentions away, leaving Shiro's question unanswered.

"The Galra have found us. We _need_ Voltron! Paladins, to your lions!"

The two of them ran for the lion hangar without another word, Shiro's shakiness and Keith's guilt that had forced them out of sight of the others now pushed away and forgotten as their duty took focus. They hadn't figured out how to form Voltron during their various practices, but they were out of time. Either they succeeded, or all was lost.

***

There was a ringing in Shiro's ears and tremors of leftover adrenaline that made it hard to walk as he exited the Black Lion, but they'd done it. Somehow they'd managed to make their lions sync and change into Voltron and stop a Zarkon robeast in its tracks. It was their first success in ages, and he felt delirious with it. His unsteady legs moved faster and faster until he was running, colliding with Hunk and Pidge and Lance as they cheered and hollered in an exhausted, bewildered, relieved embrace.

"I was a leg! I was a freaking leg!" Hunk shouted, squeezing the others tight enough to make them gasp.

"We did it! We did it? _How_ did we do it?" Pidge was asking from somewhere squished between Lance's side and Shiro's chest.

"I don't care, we kicked that Zarkon goon's butt, I have _earned_ some beauty sleep," Lance sighed, dropping his cheek to Hunk's shoulder and letting himself be lifted in another celebratory hug.

As the pile finally broke apart, Shiro felt someone was missing. Turning his head, he caught a glimpse of Keith's back as he tried to sneak away.

"Wait!" 

Shiro jogged after him and Keith stopped without turning around, but Shiro's body was losing the last of its adrenaline and as his exhaustion caught up with him, his foot snagged and he tripped, making him crash right into Keith's back. With a speed and strength that surprised Shiro, Keith easily regained his balance before Shiro could knock him over and spun on his heel to catch Shiro in his arms before he fell to the floor.

"Nice catch," Shiro laughed, hanging onto Keith's shoulders as Keith tried to pull him back up. "Sorry about tha—"

He trailed off when his head lifted up and he realized he could see Keith's face.

Keith's eyes were human, but the rest of him was unmistakably alien. Purple skin and white hair, with a pair of ears shaped akin to a cat's that stuck out beneath his hood now that he didn't have his mask to hold them down and hide them. 

"You..."

"Can you stand?" Keith asked, and despite the inhuman color of his face, Shiro thought he could recognize a blush.

Shiro stared at him dumbly for a few more seconds before snapping out of it, letting Keith help lift him up until he was standing on his own two feet again. Keith hurried to pull away and turned around, clearly intending to run and hide before anyone else could see him. But Shiro caught him with a hand on his shoulder and started to grin, his shock fading. Had Keith just been... shy? 

"What are you running away for? We couldn't have done it without you, we need you to celebrate," Shiro said, beaming down at him.

It was a strange thrill to see Keith's face like this. To be able to watch as Keith's eyes went round in surprise and his mouth fell slightly open, like he couldn't believe Shiro wanted to include him. It made Shiro smile so wide it was starting to hurt and he pulled Keith back towards the others when Keith didn't shake him off.

Lance was the first to notice them as they walked over and he squawked loudly, pointing at Keith's maskless face as the other two spun around to look at what he'd reacted to. Shiro looked back at Keith when he felt the first hesitant tug against his grip and he could see Keith's regret in going along with him in his tensed up shoulders, the thin frown on his face, and especially his eyes, narrowed and sharp as if expecting a fight.

"That's it? All you were hiding was some grey hair? Way to make a huge deal out of nothing, dude," Lance said with an exaggerated shrug.

Keith's reaction went from fear and regret to bewilderment so fast Shiro couldn't stop the laugh that bubbled out of him, making Keith's eyes dart up at him suspiciously.

"... What? My hair isn't grey, it's white."

"Don't worry, that's just Lance speak for, 'I'm relieved because I think you're not hotter than me, we can be friends now,' but don't listen to him," Hunk said, walking over and giving Keith a reassuring slap on the back. "Plenty of people dig the early salt-and-pepper thing and white hair is totally stylish. It makes you look _mature_."

"Hey! Don't go encouraging my competition!"

Keith looked truly lost now, stepping closer to Shiro like he needed protection from their human dating talk.

"You're both so weird," Pidge grumbled, shoving past a cranky Lance to hold out her hand to Keith. He frowned at it with apprehension for a moment but slowly offered his hand in return. She beamed up at him then, shaking their hands wildly enough Keith nearly stumbled from the force of it. "It was _totally freaking cool_ being a giant robot arm for the first time with you."

Shiro lifted his hand to Keith's shoulder and squeezed, dragging Keith's attention back to him when Pidge finally showed mercy and slowed down the shaking.

"She's right. It was _super_ cool forming a giant robot with you. And it means a lot that you took my advice."

The first hint of a smile started to show on Keith's face as he looked back at Shiro, and it was already breathtaking.

"Paladins! You did it!" Coran's voice called out.

Keith's expression immediately shifted to unease as he looked away and Shiro frowned, disappointed to see it vanish so quickly before he really got a chance to show it. Following his gaze, Shiro watched as the Alteans arrived to celebrate and rushed to join them at the feet of their lions, but as Allura saw Keith's unmasked face, Shiro understood why his mood had so suddenly changed. Her joy vanished at the sight of him, and though she tried to recover and fake a smile as fast as she could, Keith pulled his hand away from Pidge and shoved at Shiro's grip on his shoulder, turning and escaping immediately.

"It's all right, Princess, we're all... adjusting," Coran tried to comfort her as Keith ran off. Allura's guilt was visible on her face, but so was her relief at seeing Keith leave, and she could do nothing but stand frozen as the others turned to each other.

"That kinda killed the mood, huh," Lance muttered.

"Does this mean no celebratory victory meal?" Hunk whispered, sounding heartbroken.

"Is it always going to be like this?" Pidge asked. The three of them looked to Shiro as if he knew the answer or the way to fix it.

"It's not her fault," Shiro said quietly, staring after where Keith had disappeared. "It's a lot easier for us to adapt to him being here since we don't know the Galra like she does. But it's not Keith's fault either, and he's only been here for a few days. I'm sure they'll work it out eventually."

"Maybe it's better he keeps his mask on after all?" Lance suggested as Shiro walked away, getting an elbow jab from Pidge and a head shake from Hunk. "What was that for?" he grumbled.

Shiro was out of earshot before they gave him an answer, but he was glad they already realized that Keith had made an important step towards trusting them, and going backwards wasn't going to help anything. The awkward, teeth-gritting tension between Allura and Keith—and the rest of the Marmora—as they were forced to work together was going to take more than a mask to fix, but it wasn't something the paladins could do much about for now.

But Shiro did know he could help with _something_ , and the pulsing warmth surrounding his fingers as he thought about Keith made him hurry, bursting into a run as he chased after where he'd gone.

***

"I've been looking for you," Shiro said with a bit of surprise. Keith's masked face popped up from where he was slumped over his knees, sitting against the door to Shiro's room. "Where did you go?" he asked, trying to keep his disappointment hidden. He didn't blame Keith for hiding his face after Allura's cold reaction but he hoped it wouldn't take long to get the mask off again.

"I didn't think I should stay, so I wanted to go back to the shuttles... but I got lost," Keith mumbled as he stood. "I wasn't sure whose room this was, I just got tired of wandering."

"That'll happen in a castle this big. I don't really know my way around it much, either." Shiro paused, realizing that if Keith had reached the shuttles, he probably would be back on the Marmora ship by now. "Were you waiting here just to say goodbye to whoever found you?"

Keith hesitated, and after getting to see the expressions he could make just a little while ago, it was especially frustrating not being able to now. But Shiro waited for Keith's answer, knowing he had to be patient.

"I wanted to ask... if you think I should leave. I'll still pilot the Red Lion until you find someone else, but—"

"Of course not," Shiro said quickly. "We need you, Keith, and Allura knows that, too. The Red Lion chose _you_ , there's no one else who can take your place. I know right now it's... strained, and it's your decision, but I'd like you to stay and I can promise everyone else wants that, too. We did real good out there today, and we can do it again, but only if you're here with us. This team isn't complete without you."

Keith went quiet at that, his head dropping down until he was staring down at their feet. Not wanting to push him into a decision, but also feeling awkward just standing around in the hallway, Shiro moved towards the door to his room and it opened with a whoosh for him to step inside. He looked over his shoulder and waved when Keith didn't follow. 

"Since you're here, come inside, I want us to try these again," he said, holding up the mind readers he'd borrowed from the training room.

But Keith stayed silent and didn't move, the blankness of his mask making Shiro's stomach flip unpleasantly. He wished Keith would take it off. Had he already decided to leave after all? 

"We don't have to," Shiro added with a shrug, wanting to sound casual and avoid guilting Keith into going along with him. He'd been thinking about this idea ever since Keith came running after him earlier, though it'd been pushed to the back of his mind while they fought Zarkon's robeast. But the point was moot if Keith wasn't going to be sticking around.

"Why?" Keith asked, his voice quiet.

Shiro looked down at the readers he was holding, thinking the answer would've been obvious. "You wanted to see your mother, right? I thought we could try again."

"No, _why_ —" Keith started, shaking his head, but he cut himself off as he pushed his hood down and let his mask disappear, startling Shiro when he could see the horrified expression on Keith's face. "Why would you try those again with _me_? After what happened before?"

Shiro was taken aback at how frightened Keith looked, his eyes round and wary as they flicked down at the devices and back. The last experience hadn't been pleasant, but it had been an accident and Shiro had survived so much worse. He hadn't thought Keith would be so rattled by it and he tossed the readers behind him, walking forward to ruffle Keith's hair. It made Keith's expression soften into one of confusion and his beast-like ears flapped in surprise against his head a few times before standing up straight and alert. Shiro was still dressed in his paladin armor so he couldn't tell through his glove, but it looked soft where he scratched his fingers through it for a moment more before dropping them down to Keith's shoulder. 

"You already apologized to me for what happened the first time," Shiro said, meeting Keith's confused eyes with serious ones. "And I wanted to show you that I trust you to try it again, but we don't have to do it if you'd rather not. And I came here to take a nap actually when I couldn't find you, I wasn't expecting you to be here waiting for me. I'm pretty exhausted after everything today so I'm fine with holding off on the mind melding thing. You must be tired, too, huh?"

Keith nodded slowly, turning his gaze down to their feet. Shiro stepped back, pulling his hand away from Keith so he could start stripping off his armor. He didn't turn away though, not wanting to waste any chance to see Keith's face since he wasn't sure how often he'd be taking off his mask.

"Allura— uh, I guess Coran probably showed you to a room, right? Why don't you head back and we both rest for a while, and then you can decide if you want to try peeking into each other's heads again."

Keith opened his mouth to reply but hesitated, and this time Shiro could clearly tell he was blushing when he quietly admitted, "I... don't know where it is."

Shiro laughed as he tugged off the last of the outer armor, leaving him in the black undersuit. "Well, there's enough room on this bed for us both if you don't mind sharing."

Keith's face scrunched into a frown at the suggestion and Shiro didn't understand his unease at first, wondering if he'd stepped on some Galran cultural pet peeve he didn't know about. Did the Marmora not use beds? Was he being rude by assuming they could sleep in the same place? But then the gears in his head finally clicked into place and he felt his gut squeeze unpleasantly when he realized he'd just made a suggestion that was a lot less innocuous when it came from _someone you'd just married._

Immediately, his cheeks burned hot with embarrassment at his own nonchalant invitation. With how much other pressing stuff was going on, he'd been able to forget the whole marriage thing and hadn't had the time to consider that Keith was still bothered by it. Shiro wouldn't blame him if he was since he'd been _quite_ upset about the arrangement at first himself. But they'd only spent a handful of days together since the decision was made for them and other than in name, there wasn't anything different about their lives despite being an official married couple for the sake of their forces' alliance, so it was easy for him to ignore their unique circumstances.

But before he could apologize and offer to help Keith find his own room, Keith said, "I thought you didn't want to share a room with me."

"Uh... Nobody has to share. It's a big castle, there are lots of rooms for everyone," Shiro pointed out, confused.

"When they showed me to a separate room, I thought that was for your sake since you were upset about getting married to me." Keith looked away now, his shoulders slumping as he visibly shrank away from Shiro. "I thought you hated me, and I thought I made it worse today." 

"Woah, woah, I never hated you, it's not your fault we had to get married," Shiro said, though after the words came out he winced when he saw Keith wilt a little more. He wanted to step forward and comfort Keith but he'd put his foot in his mouth more than once already, he didn't want to make it worse. He thought quietly to himself for a few long moments, being sure to choose his next words carefully.

"The idea of marrying a stranger, who wouldn't show me their face, for an arrangement I didn't have much say in felt... unfair," he said slowly. An understatement, if ever there was one. But he was more and more glad every day that it was Keith he'd gone through the ceremony with. "But I'm sure it wasn't much easier for you, and you're not a stranger _now_ , right?"

Slowly, Keith brought his face back up. He looked a bit hopeful and gave a small nod.

Shiro blew out a sigh of relief and flopped down onto his bed, feeling winded after his abrupt brush with panic at their misunderstanding. He could still feel the embarrassment warming his face and asked nervously, "I didn't... um, I didn't insult you or anything by asking you to sleep here, did I?"

"No, you didn't. I was just confused why you'd offer if you hated..." Keith stopped and shook his head for a moment, sounding more confident when he continued, "I'd like to stay here, if you'll let me."

Shiro smiled and waved his hand for Keith to join him. Keith hesitated a moment more before finally stepping inside, the door closing automatically with a soft noise behind him.

"I guess we haven't really had a chance to talk about the whole marriage thing, have we?"

"Will it change anything if we do?" Keith mumbled as he walked up to the bed, his eyes narrowed down at his feet.

Shiro looked up at him curiously. "Well, you thought I hated you. We managed to change that, right?"

That made Keith's eyes snap upwards, focusing on Shiro with sharp interest. It made Shiro suck in a breath in surprise, but his exhaustion made it quickly push back out of him in a loud yawn. 

"We _should_ definitely talk about this, but I think it'd be better to wait until after we get some rest first," Shiro said, rolling onto his side to give Keith room on the bed. He was facing the wall but he kept his head turned over his shoulder, watching Keith carefully remove his knife and its holster and place it alongside Shiro's armor until he climbed on behind him and stretched out, pressing his back up against Shiro's.

"That sounds good," Keith agreed, shifting a little as he got comfortable.

After a few minutes, both of them going quiet and still as they started to fall asleep, Shiro nearly missed the mumbled, "Thank you," he heard from behind him. He wasn't sure if Keith hoped he was listening or hoped he was asleep, and he didn't know what exactly he was being thanked for. But whatever the reason, he was just glad Keith was closer to trusting him now.

Shiro smiled with his eyes still closed and whispered back, "You're welcome," and that was the last they said before finally nodding off.

***

Several hard knocks on the door made Shiro stir, blinking blearily as he tried to remember where he was until he tried to move and found that he couldn't, a weight settled over half his chest. Peeking down, he was greeted with Keith's head of white hair, one ear pressed between his head and Shiro's skin and the other poking straight upwards. As he pushed up on his elbow to get a better look, he realized their legs were tangled together, too, as Keith sprawled out comfortably atop him. Confusion settled over him as he slowly took in their sleeping arrangement, because last he remembered, they'd gone to sleep back to back.

It was also quite jarring since he felt well and truly rested and he hadn't woken up to any of his usual nightmares that made him avoid sleeping much in the first place. He hadn't slept like that since the Kerberos mission had turned into his alien kidnapping.

The knocking started up again and Shiro carefully lifted Keith's face and hand away from his chest to settle him down on the bed as he expertly maneuvered himself out from beneath him before stumbling out of the bunk to get the door. He was squinting and blinking the sleep out of his eyes when the door opened and he found Allura standing there, looking startled.

Shiro didn't understand what was so surprising about coming out of his own room, but he was very groggy so maybe he just needed a minute or two to figure it out.

"Is this where you've been? For nearly a whole quintant?" she asked, sounding aghast.

Shiro brought a hand up to rub at his eyes as he tried to remember what Altean time translated into human time and he took a few steps forward, making her walk backwards until they were both out in the hallway and the door could shut behind him. He didn't want to wake up Keith with their talking.

"Um... If you mean since the fight with Voltron, yeah," he said, followed by a very loud yawn. He was pretty sure quintants were some measure of hours or days, but from the look of Allura's surprise, it was probably closer to day. He wouldn't be surprised if they'd slept that long from the way he felt now.

"With Keith? Was that him in there?"

Her tone suddenly made his attention sharpen as he focused on her face. She sounded... hopeful, and as he squinted down at her, he could see it in her expression, too. That was unusual coming from her when the topic was Keith.

"Yeah, we were both exhausted. Have you been looking for him?"

Allura's shoulders sagged with relief as she sighed, hugging her arms to her chest. "Yes, I'd thought..." She didn't finish, shaking her head to herself instead, but Shiro could guess. She must've worried that she'd run him off the castle ship and back to the Marmora, and he decided to keep it to himself that she nearly did. When she looked back up at Shiro she had schooled her face back into looking serious, ready to get back to her duties.

"You and the rest of the paladins have had enough rest, I should think. It's time we make sure you can repeat the process of forming Voltron and that this first success wasn't a fluke. I'll call for you all within the next varga, so please be dressed and ready by then."

As she walked away, Shiro felt confident that meant she'd given them an hour to get up and eat something before they'd be back to training drills. Which meant he and Keith really _had_ slept for nearly a whole day. He'd certainly been tired enough to do that, but he didn't think he could sleep more than a few hours anymore, and even that many only if he was lucky. He turned back to his room, letting the door open for him as he tried to figure out what had made it so easy for him to sleep after all this time.

When he stepped inside Keith was still stretched out on his bed, though he was starting to stir now. His face scrunched in dissatisfaction as he shifted around, his fingers clawing at the dwindling warmth left behind from where Shiro had been.

"Shiro?" Keith mumbled in a groggy voice. He sat up slowly, rubbing at his eyes, and Shiro had to bite his lip to stop from smiling too wide when Keith's ears wiggled around, shaking his bedhead off of them.

"Hey, how'd you sleep?" Shiro asked, grabbing for the pieces of his armor to start getting dressed.

"Fine... What about you?"

"I slept great," Shiro said, still surprised by it. "First time in a long time I didn't wake myself up. Forming Voltron really must've taken it out of me."

Keith chewed at his lip as he slowly kicked his legs off the side of his bed, debating whether or not to share what he was thinking about saying. Before he got a chance to decide, a loud, hungry gurgle erupted from his stomach. Shiro paused where he was pulling on his leg armor, then laughed as Keith's cheeks turned dark from the strength of his blush.

"Don't worry, we've got some time to go eat before training starts again," Shiro said as Keith grabbed for his knife and holster, desperately looking anywhere but at him.

After getting the rest of his paladin armor on and a quick trip to the bathroom, the walk to the kitchens was quiet except for Shiro occasionally yawning. He wanted to bring up the whole marriage thing and get it over with, but it was a conversation he wanted to have when both of them were wide awake and able to focus. He figured getting some food in them first would make it go better.

Hunk was the only other paladin in the kitchen when they arrived, and he helped them make plates of very gross-looking food goo. Shiro was steadily growing used to it despite how it looked so he had no trouble digging in as they sat down to eat. As he chewed, he watched Keith poke at his goo once before making a grim face, steeling himself before taking a full spoonful. Shiro had to hide a laugh behind his hand when Keith squeezed his eyes shut as if biting into something sour.

"Why does it have to be so... goopy," Keith muttered.

"You get used to it," Hunk said, already on his second plate. "And it's so filling!"

Keith didn't seem very convinced, but he stopped making faces as he took more bites. Once Shiro was done with his own meal he pushed his plate away but stayed seated, watching Keith finish his food.

"So. Are you guys, like, officially cohabiting now?"

Hunk's question made Shiro flinch in surprise while Keith choked on his spoonful of food goo.

"Uh—" Shiro faltered, patting Keith on the back as he continued to cough.

"Allura was looking for Keith for _hours_ yesterday and you disappeared too but then she told us all she found him sleeping in your room after nearly a whole day of being missing before she explained the training schedule for the day. She and Coran didn't seem to get what you two were doing so we and the mice explained, by the way."

"Great," Shiro said flatly, rubbing his temple. Allura had been at his door at most fifteen minutes ago and already things were getting out of hand. This hadn't been how he wanted to start their, "So about us being married," conversation.

"We're happy for you two, obviously. You weren't thrilled about getting married to begin with so this is a good thing, right? You get to do the honeymoon thing after all, though you're pretty much stuck here instead of going on sweet vacation. Kind of a bummer."

Keith was no longer choking but now he just looked miserable with a deep blush on his face, staring solemnly at his plate.

"Enough with the jokes. It's not what you guys think," Shiro said, not taking his eyes off of Keith, "Can you tell the others we'll be a little late to training? I need to talk to Keith for a minute."

"Sure. But y'know we're cool with the whole interspecies—"

" _Hunk,_ " Shiro interrupted as he stood up. He gave Hunk a pleading look, wanting him to drop it. "He just couldn't find his room, so he crashed with me. Nobody's 'honeymooning.' Make sure everybody knows _that_ , please."

"Sure," Hunk said with a shrug, though he was glancing between them doubtfully. That was a mess Shiro would have to clean up soon, but right now he really needed to clear things up with Keith first. 

Tapping at Keith's shoulder, Shiro waited for Keith to get up before leading him out of the kitchen and down the hallway towards the training room. They stopped midway, Shiro peeking around a corner to make sure no one was coming. He wanted privacy to do this, but apparently taking Keith back to one of their rooms would lead to a certain kind of gossip he didn't want Keith to have to deal with.

He sighed, rubbing a knuckle against the bridge of his nose. He could feel a headache coming, but he needed to get this over with.

"Sorry, this is my fault. I'll explain to everyone that we're not—" Shiro paused, clearing his throat with a cough. He could feel his face growing hot. "Um. I'll make sure they know that nothing is going on. With us. You don't have to worry about it."

Keith was slow to nod and remained silent, grimacing at the floor. Shiro was glad he hadn't put his mask back up but it was almost harder to speak to him now. Shiro wanted him to smile again and trust that Shiro would take care of this embarrassing gossip, but his miserable expression hadn't changed since he choked on his breakfast.

"Um. So. About us, uh, being married. I know the ceremony was official, and we'll probably have to make a show of it for diplomacy reasons with other aliens eventually, but I think Kolivan and Allura know it's just a formality thing. So whatever assumptions anyone else makes—and I promise, I'll clear it up with the other paladins first thing—I want you to know I'm not making them, and I don't want either of us to have to treat this like it's real."

Shiro waited for Keith to nod or agree or do _anything_ , but he stood still and quiet, looking as if he was receiving a reprimand for something he'd done wrong. Was he saying the right thing? Keith certainly looked bothered by this topic but he wasn't giving Shiro any clues about how to make the situation better for him.

"Keith?" Shiro prompted when he continued to say nothing.

"I get it," Keith mumbled, his arms folding over his chest. Shiro raised an eyebrow, familiar with the body language but not sure why Keith was suddenly mad at him.

"I can tell it's really bothering you," he pressed. It hadn't been this hard to reassure Keith last night, so why was it so difficult now? "I know it's especially not fair to you—you had to leave the Marmora to train with us for Voltron—but we need you here. I just... I want to make it easier, however I can. But you have to tell me how to do that."

"It'd be _easier_ if you'd quit—" Keith hissed, but stopped himself. He was glaring now and his fingers were squeezing tight against his arms.

"Quit what?" Shiro asked, wishing Keith would look at him. He hadn't brought his eyes up from the floor since they left the kitchen. When Keith didn't answer, Shiro's voice went soft as he asked instead, "Are you still worried I hate you? I thought we cleared this up last night."

Keith's grimace finally softened a little at Shiro's words and he shook his head, though he still wouldn't meet his eyes. "You just wish you weren't married to me."

"Well... Yeah. You've felt the same since Kolivan told you we'd have to do this, right?" 

"I'm starting to," Keith said with a sigh. His shoulders sagged and his hands fell to his sides as he started walking, pushing past Shiro who was left stunned for a moment.

What did that mean? The look of resignation and disappointment on Keith's face made Shiro's gut churn harshly, dread filling him up that he'd irreparably damaged something between them, even if he wasn't sure what. He spun around when he could think again but when he reached for Keith, he was already gone, disappeared down the hallway.

Shiro's fingers squeezed around empty air, and the recent warmth he'd grown used to feeling across his skin where he'd been tied to Keith was missing.

***

"I'm more of an expert when it comes to relationships with the ladies but I'm sensing something got screwed up pretty badly, dude."

Shiro didn't look up, his head still in his hands where he sat on a dusty alien rock.

"I know, Lance."

While Allura and Hunk were spending time with the aliens they'd just aided trying to win them over, Pidge flitted off elsewhere with the excuse of not being a people person, Keith hovered by the Red Lion radiating the opposite of approachableness, and Shiro had run out of energy to play the respectable leader and was hiding just outside the alien town's center, away from the lions and the attempts at diplomacy with the locals. His one full night of sleep had proven to be an anomaly and he was back to barely getting any at all, kept awake by nightmares, and the shaky state of their team wasn't helping with his stress and exhaustion, either.

Whatever Lance had been doing—bragging about either himself or Voltron to any aliens who would listen, most likely—he'd put on the back burner to come to give Shiro relationship advice, apparently.

Because things had, quite obviously to everyone, not been going well. The paladins had spent the last few weeks trying to form Voltron again and failed every time, no matter what training, strategies or team-building exercises they did, and it was all too clear that the new uncomfortable tension between Keith and Shiro was the cause. Keith spoke only when necessary and hadn't taken his mask off around them in days, and though Allura still blamed herself for her bad reaction after their first and so far only victory, Shiro knew it was his fault.

For a brief time, he'd managed to push through the unease between Keith and the rest of them and he'd _thought_ they'd found common ground to start trusting each other, but whatever had changed for that one day, Shiro had not only undone it but made things even worse than before. His attempts at undoing the mistaken gossip about their non-existent love life weren't fixing things either and the other paladins seemed to refuse to believe him anyway. 

Fortunately there hadn't been any run-ins with Zarkon's fleets chasing after the lions so far, and what missions they had been given didn't need more than the lions' strengths, helping rid smaller planets of remnant Galra forces or planetary issues not involving the Galra at all. It was pretty hard to convince the local aliens to believe and trust in a team made up of Voltron's paladins and the Marmora to defeat Zarkon when they couldn't get Voltron to show up, though.

"You should talk to him. He just ignores us when we do, but he's always paying attention to you. I think he's waiting for you to say something first, since he's not exactly the talkative type," Lance said, spinning his helmet on his hand.

"He doesn't want me to. I've tried," Shiro sighed, thinking of the several times he'd tried to pull Keith aside only to be shaken off or flat out ignored in the first few days after their last conversation. He'd given up since.

Lance made a humming noise, sounding doubtful. "Are you sure? Because he's been staring at you the whole time since we parked the lions. That's the only reason I knew how to find you hiding out back here."

Shiro finally lifted his head out of his hands to frown up at Lance. "What? What are you talking about, how can you even tell with his mask on?"

But when Shiro stood up to peek back where the lions were sitting, he managed to catch Keith's mask facing their direction before he quickly turned away and walked around the Red Lion's leg, disappearing from view.

"Man, you were like this back at the Garrison, too," Lance said, laughing a little.

"Like what?" Shiro asked, still staring at where Keith had been. How long had he been looking this way? Had he been glaring behind that mask, or looking regretful? 

"Like _totally oblivious_. Did you have _any_ idea how many people were looking at you? All the time? Giving all the guys at the Garrison—who were all less handsome than me, of course—a rough time because they couldn't get any of the ladies or other gents to spare them a glance when _you_ were there?"

Shiro finally turned back to Lance now, his eyebrows raised skeptically. "Do you mean after I got named pilot for the Kerberos mission? I know it turned me into a mini-celebrity for a minute before I left, but that would've happened to anyone who got picked."

"Oh no, it's even worse than I thought," Lance sighed dramatically, shaking his head. Shiro made a face, not understanding, but Lance was apparently tired of giving advice and started sauntering back towards the crowd of alien locals poking at the Blue Lion's feet. Shiro looked around for Keith in his Marmora uniform, his pulse speeding up a bit at the thought of catching Keith looking his way again, but all he could spot was a very exhausted Allura, and Hunk who was trying to get the aliens interested in Voltron with his best impersonation of the giant robot.

Shiro was still tired, but his body felt a little bit lighter now as he grabbed his helmet and got up to join the others. He was glad to find out Keith wasn't ignoring him completely—at least not when Shiro wasn't looking back, anyway. It was _something_.

After what he'd gone through and the struggles Team Voltron were still facing, he'd learned to appreciate whatever gave him hope, no matter how small.

***

It was getting easier to guess where the various members of Team Voltron could be found on the castle ship. Shiro chose to believe that meant they were getting closer to understanding each other and how they each thought, a sign that they were becoming the team they needed to be. It also meant, much to his relief, that Keith wasn't going out of his way to change his habits just to hide from him when Shiro found him exactly where he was used to him being: in the training room, even after the rest of the paladins had long since left.

Keith didn't have his mask up when Shiro arrived to see him fending off two gladiator bots with just his Marmora blade. It was amazing to watch him. Compared to Shiro's fuzzy memory of his time as a prisoner when he'd been forced to fight and learned how to move out of desperation and necessity, Keith moved fluidly like he'd been training how to do it his whole life, aggressive but never wasteful of his movements. The paladins hadn't been forced to fight outside their lions much and their handling of their bayards wasn't that great, even with training, and Shiro wondered as he watched if Keith would be willing to teach them some things from the Marmora.

Shiro lost track of how long he stood there until Keith ended the gladiator program and finally realized Shiro was watching. They both froze for a moment, unsure of what to do. But Keith recovered faster, putting back on his mask, and he moved for the exit as his blade shrank back to the size of knife, leaving Shiro to scramble before he could disappear.

"Wait!" Shiro said, holding out the mind readers he'd brought with him. He didn't stand in Keith's way to stop him from leaving but he was relieved when Keith paused at the sight of them. "We never got a chance to try these again. I was hoping you'd be free to give it a shot?"

His heart was hammering hard as the impassive Marmora mask gave away nothing, but when Keith spoke, Shiro could hear the confusion in his voice. 

"You still want to do that? Aren't you worried what they'll think by _mistake_?"

It was Shiro's turn to be confused and he frowned, not sure what Keith was talking about.

"I was kinda hoping this would be a private thing, but that doesn't mean I'm trying to hide it from anybody," Shiro said, holding up the devices to show he only had enough for the two of them. He'd gone to Coran for tips on how to use them but he still wasn't sure he could handle more than one person swimming around in his head at a time, and the point of this wasn't to be training for Voltron so much as it was showing Keith that he trusted him anyway.

Keith was silent for a few moments, considering the idea, and then he turned and headed for the exit without saying a word.

Shiro felt his heart sink as he watched Keith walk away, rejecting his offer. But it felt more like a final rejection of _him_ , and it stung worse than he was prepared for. His human hand squeezed into a fist, trying to will the sensation that tied him to Keith to pulse across his skin again and maybe, somehow make Keith feel it, too. But his fingers felt no warmth where they pressed against his palm and Keith didn't stop.

"Keith..." Shiro called out, wanting to offer something—an apology, a promise to stay out of his way, _anything_ to keep Keith from hating him completely.

But whatever he'd started to say was lost and forgotten when Keith whirled on him suddenly and shouted, "Just _leave me alone!_ "

Shiro flinched backwards at the outburst and froze, terrified that he'd upset Keith to the point of snapping. But Keith seemed just as shocked by it himself, his breaths coming out rapid and uneven through his mask, and his hands shook so badly his knife slipped out of his grip and clattered loudly where it fell onto the floor. 

"I— You keep—" 

Keith didn't finish any of his jumbled thoughts, though Shiro wished he had. Instead Keith scrambled to pick up his knife before turning and fleeing as fast as he could, leaving Shiro alone where he stood.

Back on Earth, when the worst of Shiro's troubles had been grades and making sure he impressed the instructors, he'd known younger enlisters who needed someone to reach out to them, and he'd always tried. Not all of them had appreciated it and plenty had rebuffed him entirely. But the way he'd felt then—disappointment in himself, sympathy for them—was nothing like what he felt now.

Shaking as he started to breathe again, Shiro dropped the mind readers, slowly slumped onto the floor and closed his eyes. He stretched out on his back and tried to make his heart slow down, wishing the castle would swallow him whole.

He wasn't an idiot. He'd lost so much of himself already after what the Galra had put him through and what was left he'd focused solely on stopping Zarkon. There was only so much he could give the other paladins beyond helping them focus on their mission before he would be whittled down to nothing. Maybe it was selfish to want to keep living but he told himself he was needed to pilot the Black Lion, so he knew what his limits were and he kept to them. Whatever culture shock or personal problems Keith had with the rest of the team—with _him_ —Shiro didn't have the energy or the ability to fix them, and he'd tried enough times that he had to give up now.

But there was a horrible ache in his chest now after watching Keith _flee_ from him. It _hurt_ and he wasn't prepared for it. And it only got worse the longer he dwelled on what he'd done to earn that kind of reaction.

For a long time he just laid there, overwhelmed and exhausted. He tried to think about other things to distract himself and when that didn't work he tried to think about nothing and maybe fall asleep, but whatever he forced his mind to think or not think about, he'd just go back to thinking about Keith. 

That's how Pidge found him however many minutes or hours later, stuck on the floor unable to sleep but too drained to move as he quietly chastised himself for letting things go so wrong.

"Oh, hey, Shiro. You okay?"

Shiro hummed noncommittally and didn't move. He wondered if Pidge had come here to train or just to find him, and he got the answer when she didn't ask him anything else and he heard her grunt as she started stretching for her warm up. 

The gladiator bots Keith had abandoned reactivated soon after and Shiro finally peaked an eye open, turning so he could watch what Pidge was doing. Similar to Keith's earlier training, Pidge was using her bayard to try and take on two of them on at once. But unlike Keith, she was visibly struggling, an obvious novice as she was tossed across the room. She managed a few new tricks with her bayard that Shiro hadn't seen her do before, but it didn't take long before he had to call out to stop the program so she wouldn't get seriously hurt. 

Finally getting up off the floor, he walked over to her and asked as he came to a stop, "Need help?"

"I'm fine," Pidge grumbled, untangling herself from her bayard.

Shiro glanced behind him at the two gladiators before offering her a hand to help her up. "Maybe you should start with just one. Warm up to two instead of overwhelming yourself."

"That's what I've _been_ doing!" Pidge snapped. It made Shiro pause, now growing concerned that anything he said was going to upset somebody around him. His track record so far today was abysmal. "Sorry," Pidge said quickly, adjusting her glasses and giving him a tired look once she was back on her feet, her weapon back to its default size.

"No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound like you haven't been training enough," Shiro said, holding his hands up.

She sighed, glowering down at her bayard. "Apparently I _haven't_."

"Then train with me."

For a second Shiro wasn't sure she'd accept the offer. But her frustration was clearly more with herself and her momentary failure than with him and after a moment she nodded quietly, following him back to the center of the room.

It was much easier to function again when he had something to focus on that didn't eat a hole in his chest. Punch there, dodge that, kick here, roll back, his body and mind moving on autopilot as he and Pidge sparred. Without a bayard of his own and unwilling to use his Galra arm's power against her, she had an advantage and she tried the tricks he'd seen her use against the bots before, but he had experience—most of which he didn't care to remember, but his body couldn't forget, drilled into him painfully with the scars to match—and easily avoided or countered her every time. He offered tips with every missed punch or deflected shot of her bayard, and as she followed them, it got harder and harder to block or avoid her attacks.

Shiro could tell she really had been training a lot. He felt proud of her, impressed that she'd gone to such lengths on her own, and disappointed in himself for being too caught up in his own stress to notice. But it was obvious she wasn't fully satisfied, grimacing at her bayard once they finally took a break. Shiro grabbed the drink pouches from where Coran usually got them for the paladins and tossed one her way before collapsing to catch his breath.

"I think I'm going to try the gladiator bots after all," she said after finishing her drink.

"You're not exhausted yet? Don't overwork yourself. Rest is just as important as training." Hypocritical maybe, coming from him when he hadn't managed proper rest in weeks, but no less true.

But Pidge just shook her head, tossing the pouch behind her and standing up from where she'd plopped down for their break. "I'm not going to get any better at this just training with you if you're always taking it easy on me. The gladiators won't do that."

Shiro ran a hand through his hair, trying to hide his guilt at getting caught. She wasn't exactly wrong, but Shiro hoped she wasn't pushing herself this hard for the wrong reasons.

"None of us are experts yet, Pidge," he said eventually, pushing onto his feet when she moved towards the bots. "I trust you know what you're doing when you practice in here, but it's like any kind of thing you want to learn. You have to start with what's not going to kill you first."

"Keith's pretty much an expert," she countered, making Shiro's heart jump in surprise. He'd managed to push Keith out of his mind since Pidge arrived, but here she was bringing him back into Shiro's focus again. She turned her face up to look at him while he was caught off guard and narrowed her eyes at him, suspicious. "And he's usually the one hanging around here to help me out, not you. What'd you say to him _this_ time?"

Shiro's chest began to tighten painfully, the same feeling that had left him drained and stuck on the floor earlier making it hard to breathe because he still couldn't figure out the answer to that question.

"What do you mean?" Shiro asked with a sudden roughness in his voice. It wasn't a secret that he and Keith had been stepping awkwardly around each other for a while now, but Shiro had thought everyone else was just as in the dark about _why_ things had gotten that way as he was. If Keith had confided in Pidge, maybe she could help him fix it.

But she quirked her eyebrow at him, skeptical that he didn't know what she was talking about.

"I'm not exactly a people person but even _I_ can tell you're being kind of a jerk about the whole thing. It's not like it was his idea to marry you, either."

Shiro must've looked as horrible as he felt the moment she said it because her expression quickly softened into one of pity.

"We get it, okay? Really, no one would want to be stuck marrying an alien they didn't know, but we _do_ know him now, and he's not a bad guy. Maybe he's impolite and kinda grumpy sometimes, but not bad. So you don't have to rub it in his face how much you hate anyone thinking you'd ever be with him when he's never complained once."

"What? That's not what I have a problem with. It's just that everyone keeps making assumptions about us that might make him uncomfortable," Shiro sighed, pinching his nose as he thought back on the _extremely_ painful half hour he had to spend with Coran and Allura undoing the damage the others had done. "I'm not trying to be a jerk but I don't know what else to do but shut it down quickly before anymore 'mating' explanations have to happen."

Pidge looked immediately horrified at the idea of that kind of conversation, but just as quickly shifted back into a mix of confusion and pity. 

"Wow, Lance wasn't kidding," she mumbled.

"About what?"

She didn't answer, taking off her glasses to rub a hand over her eyes before sliding them back on and giving Shiro a serious look.

"Think of it this way: you're sent to live with strangers you're going to be working with, and part of the deal is you have to _pretend_ to be official partners with one of them. They're a nice person so it's easy to get along and you don't mind pretending because you know it's not a real partnership, but every time someone else brings it up around them, they insist it's not true. As if anyone thinking they'd like you enough to really want to be partners upsets them. But the rest of the time, they're still nice to you. Wouldn't you get the feeling they didn't really mean it and they actually don't like you at all?" 

By the time Pidge finished, Shiro wanted nothing more than to crumple back down onto the floor like he had been when she'd first arrived with hopes that it would swallow him whole once and for all. 

At first, he'd wanted to protest her imaginary scenario because the marriage between him and Keith hadn't been 'pretend.' The alien but gentle burn he felt sometimes where their connection was etched into his bones was more than real, and with or without the other things that made a marriage loving, it had been official with witnesses and a judge and a bunch of space politics depending on it.

And worst of all, there was no undoing it as far as Shiro knew. That had been the most terrifying thing.

Because Shiro never could picture things very far beyond the war and where he'd end up, and it didn't really matter whenever he tried because what kind of life could he live afterwards? But Keith wasn't like him. Keith shouldn't have been tied to a dead man walking, and so Shiro wanted to make sure Keith didn't feel trapped to this arrangement neither of them wanted. He'd insisted every time anyone made a comment otherwise that it wasn't a _real_ relationship even if it had an official seal to it so that once he was out of the picture, Keith could go and have the full life he should without a second thought about the random human soldier he'd had to fight with for a while.

But now, all those bitten-back thoughts Keith had stopped himself from saying, the way he'd looked hurt every time Shiro tried to reassure him, and his eventual refusal to stay and listen to Shiro anymore began to play back through his mind. A growing heaviness—of guilt, regret, mortification, and dread—settled painfully over Shiro's shoulders, making it hurt to stay upright. 

_"Are you still worried I hate you? I thought we cleared this up last night."_

_"You just wish you weren't married to me."_

_"Well... Yeah. You've felt the same since Kolivan told you we'd have to do this, right?"_

_"I'm starting to."_

Shiro understood what Keith meant now. To Keith, the marriage didn't mean anything to begin with because it was a means to an end and a part of his mission, immaterial and forgettable in the face of bigger things. But Shiro had been so caught up in his fears of what it _could_ mean for both of them and his attempts to protect Keith's feelings that he'd missed the mark entirely, creating only distance and distrust and bitterness between them instead.

 _He_ was the reason they couldn't form Voltron.

"Shiro? You okay?" 

Pidge's voice snapped him back to the present and he realized she was staring at him with genuine concern now.

"You really hadn't noticed, huh..."

He opened his mouth, but found he had no voice. He swallowed around the painful lump in his throat instead and turned away, looking for the exit.

There was probably no fixing things between them fully and he wasn't going to go after Keith now and risk making things worse. The best he could do was shut up for a while.

***

"Your paladins have failed to produce Voltron in the weeks we have aided you, so it is clear this alliance was a mistake. Keith will be returning with us, along with the Red Lion. As long as one of the lions is not with you, if Zarkon retrieves the rest, all will not be lost."

Kolivan's declaration stunned the bridge into silence. The Marmora rarely came aboard the Castle of Lions and even rarer was a sighting of their leader, because aside from Keith, the majority of their organization didn't involve itself with their efforts, sending only tiny forces for aid when absolutely necessary. It had saved them certainly, but it was hard to believe they truly believed in this alliance with how little they offered. Allura was the most frustrated by it, angered that they had to accept help from Galra in the first place, then insulted when they seemed reluctant to lift much of a finger to help at all.

So they'd all been expecting something serious when Kolivan had arrived suddenly and announced he had something important to discuss, but nothing like _this_. 

"You can't... just _take_ one of the lions and its paladin!" Allura shouted, the first to shake off her disbelief. "And they did form Voltron! It's just like you Galra to—"

"Expect better results than seeing Voltron _once_ in a minor battle against a single robeast of Zarkon's?" Kolivan countered, making Allura go quiet despite the growing fury on her face. "I think that's a fair expectation in a war, Princess."

The anger rolling off of Allura was strong enough to make the whole room take a few steps backwards, but Kolivan stared down at her unmoved.

It was true that they were still struggling. Shiro felt his gut squeeze tight, feeling the weight of a few eyes boring into him as the tense silence stretched on, _knowing_ he was at fault for this. He and Keith had been actively avoiding each other ever since that day Pidge helped Shiro reach his epiphany, and it was clear when they were in their lions that the team was nowhere close to coming together. But despite their discomfort and distance, Shiro knew Keith couldn't have agreed to something like _this._ Among the sea of identical Marmora masks in the room, Shiro couldn't pick out Keith, which meant he had to be somewhere else because he'd never stay silent while Kolivan made that kind of declaration.

He just hoped Keith hadn't been dragged onto a Marmora ship with the Red Lion already, ready to disappear from them forever.

The first one brave enough to speak up next was Hunk, though he did it from the back of the room.

"Uh, d-don't you think we should at least get a shot to try one more time? Before you steal one of the lions?"

"It's not stealing. It's protection. If Zarkon gets his hands on Voltron by gathering all the lions then all is lost," one of the Marmora agents pointed out.

"You guys had ten thousand years to defeat him without Voltron and didn't!" Lance shouted, stepping forward. "Shouldn't you guys know how to be patient? We've only had like two months to try and figure things out, we should get a few more chances before you just dump us!" 

"The time we've spent over the centuries carefully infiltrating Zarkon's army couldn't have been done any faster without exposing our mission. And now we've jeopardized ourselves and our agents enough by aiding you with no results, we cannot risk our discovery any further," another Marmora member said. He was larger than Kolivan and when he stepped forward, Lance gulped and shuffled over to hide behind Allura and her emanating rage that was keeping the rest of them at bay.

"We've gotten plenty of results! We've saved planets-worth of people already, how is that not _enough_?" Pidge argued, storming forward even though she barely came up to the waist of the giant Galra she was sticking her chin at.

But Kolivan was shaking his head, his stern expression softening for the first time into something closer to understanding as he looked down at the paladins.

"There is more life at stake than what can be held on a handful of planets. Zarkon enslaves and brutalizes _galaxies_ across the known universe. More have died at the hands of the Galra empire than you or I could ever fathom, and he has the power to make nearly every species extinct if he so commanded it. That is why defeating him is more important than any one, thousand, or even a million lives—the mission is bigger than all of us, and if we risk our plans to stop Zarkon our way while you struggle to find yours, we risk the fate of the universe. It is too much to ask of us."

"If you're so determined to be cowards, then go! We don't need you or your _aid_ ," Allura hissed, her voice cold and her eyes like daggers. "You speak so highly of your order and the good you do while innocents die. Defeating Zarkon _is_ of utmost importance, but do you realize Voltron is bigger than Zarkon? That's why he fears it and searches for it as feverishly as he does. _Everyone_ we've saved knows the stories of Voltron."

Kolivan's certainty faltered for just a moment, but the air in the room changed immediately. Allura was no longer on the defensive as she scowled upwards at the Marmora leader, every bit of her resolve making her presence feel bigger and more imposing from where she stood in the center of the room, enough to cow the Galra fighters twice her size.

"Yeah! She's right!" Lance cheered from behind her when the room had stayed silent for too long. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes as she blew the air back out, and when she opened them again, her anger was gone, replaced by patient calm. 

"It takes more than might to win a war," Allura continued, her words louder and steadier than before as she coolly looked around the bridge. "You need people to believe that the war is worth winning. Zarkon has a hold on the universe that has gone unchallenged for ten thousand years, but the _whisper_ of the name Voltron is enough to make that grasp grow weaker. We have Voltron now, and if we save people and show them that Voltron is back, then Zarkon will be fighting more than just us. He will be facing down a rebellion from every force in the universe that believes in us."

It was then that Shiro finally found his voice.

"If the Marmora want to go, then fine. We can't stop anyone who wants to stop working with us. But the universe needs Voltron and Voltron needs Keith. He hasn't said what he wants to do, so where is he?"

Some of the others began to look around, just now noticing that the red paladin they were debating over wasn't here to take part. Shiro kept his eyes on Kolivan and refused to shrink away. He knew he didn't have much right to be arguing when it was his fault Voltron had failed to appear again but Allura's strength emboldened him despite his guilt.

"Keith is a Blade," Kolivan said simply, avoiding Shiro's question and assuming Keith's choice would be a given.

But Shiro refused to believe that. Their small team had so little in common—even between the members who all came from the same planet—except for their reason to fight. Whatever initial motivations or circumstances led them to piloting a lion, they now wanted to save everyone they could and even if it was impossible, they at least had to try. That was why they were still trying to win this war despite failure after failure after failure.

Shiro didn't know what Keith's reason for fighting was but he felt certain that it couldn't be the same detached, "greater good" resolve of the Marmora if the Red Lion had chosen him. He had to believe that it wouldn't have denied so many other pilots only to accept someone so willing to sacrifice innocent life, no matter the scale.

"He's a paladin of Voltron, too," Shiro said, his tone final. 

The room was frozen as if everyone was holding their breath, waiting for Kolivan's response. After a moment, he sighed and shook his head.

"He certainly fits in amongst you with that kind of stubbornness," Kolivan said, the stern face Shiro had never seen him without suddenly slipping for an exasperated weariness more fit for a father speaking of his son than a commander and his soldier. It was jarring enough that Shiro was stunned, and when Kolivan noticed he raised a tired eyebrow. "You would keep a Galra on your team despite his failure to—" 

"It's not his failure. It's mine," Shiro interrupted, recovering from his brief surprise. It probably wasn't the best negotiation tactic to admit the problem with Voltron was him, but he wouldn't let Keith take the blame for it.

"It's mine, too," Allura said. Guilt colored her voice but it was still steady, her belief unwavering as she declared, "But the paladins will not fail again."

Shiro glanced behind him and Pidge gave him a nod of reassurance, Lance was no longer cowering behind Allura, his shoulders set with determination, and Hunk was stepping through the crowd of Marmora onlookers until he and the rest of the team were standing in front of the whole room, staring defiantly up at Kolivan.

"Where is Keith?" Shiro asked again. If he'd already been dragged aboard a Marmora ship, the team was ready to storm it and take him back if they had to.

The Marmora leader watched them all for a moment, considering them carefully. And then with a defeated sigh he answered, "He's locked himself in the Red Lion. He refuses to let us take it."

Relief rushed through Shiro and he quickly looked at the other paladins before they all turned and ran for the doors that would take them to their own lions. Keith had already made his choice. He had chosen Voltron, and that was all they needed.

The lights of the Black Lion's cockpit bloomed to life as Shiro reached the controls. Immediately, he knew something was different, his bones feeling heavy with new weight as if he _was_ the lion, making every motion and every sound as one when it stood and roared. As the Black Lion's voiceless words floated through his mind, the doors for all the lions opened and he launched out into space, knowing everyone would be following behind him.

"Keith. You there?" Shiro asked, though he could feel the pull of the Red Lion from close behind him. The real question was whether Keith would answer him.

"What did you tell Kolivan?" Keith's voice was quiet, but it filled Shiro with joy to get a response.

"That the Marmora can go, but they can't take you."

"Yeah, man, you're stuck with us now," Hunk's voice cheered, making Shiro laugh.

"We're way cooler, anyway. You should really start wearing our uniform, we dress better, too," Lance suggested.

"Sorry to keep you waiting but we're ready to show that grumpy old Galra what we can do," Pidge said, then after a moment added, "Uh, I'm giving a thumbs up, by the way."

The sound of Keith laughing made Shiro's chest squeeze with warmth and relief. He didn't say anything back, but he didn't need to. They knew he was with them.

"All right, team. Let's form Voltron," Shiro called out with a confidence he hadn't felt in ages. His body sang with it, reverberating with the lion, the heaviness replaced with weightlessness as he flew faster and moved easier than ever before. His vision blurred the faster they soared and he closed his eyes only to see the stars the way no human could against his eyelids.

He was no longer just one human but a part of the Black Lion, and it a part of him.

Keith hadn't been on the bridge to hear the paladin's words or Allura's confidence in them and for all Shiro knew the relationship between them was never going to improve, but his voice was the loudest to answer as all the paladins shouted, " _Yes, sir_!" and their lions came together.

Despite all their weeks of failures and frustration, now it was as easy and natural to be Voltron as breathing. When Allura's voice came through their comms telling them Kolivan wanted proof that they could do it again, they easily split apart before reforming. Over and over, they transformed until they were exhausted with it and still they kept going, riding on the high of success. Whatever had been missing or not quite aligning before, Kolivan had provided it for them now: someone tangible and immediate to unite against and prove to that _they would not be taken out of this fight_.

The spectre of Zarkon had been too overwhelming yet vague, a force they couldn't really fathom because dictator of the known _universe_ was a scale that was too hard to wrap their heads around. But Kolivan was right there, watching from the Castle of Lions with Allura and Coran as they reformed Voltron again and again to prove him wrong.

When they finally used up the last of their energy, the lions split apart for the last time and carried them back to the ship. Their only other successful attempt at forming Voltron may well have been a fluke, but this time there was no question that they were ready as a team. As Shiro shakily left his lion, Allura was already sprinting across the hangar, running right for Keith where he had exited his own lion, his mask off and hood down, no longer hiding. The other paladins all watched as he froze, not sure what to expect until she collided with him, hugging him tight as she thanked him again and again for choosing to stay with Voltron. He looked bewildered but not uncomfortable, slowly wrapping his arms around her back in return.

Her apprehension in dealing with the Galra of the Marmora may not have eased, but Keith was a paladin and she had no doubts about him anymore. Whatever ill feelings may have been between them, it was clear Keith forgave them as he let her continue to whisper her thanks against his cheek.

"Okay... Okay, I think it's been long enough. Ahem. _Princess_." Lance's voice grew louder the longer they hugged and he cleared his throat repeatedly, but she wasn't letting go. "That's it! I'm breaking this up!"

He tried to take a step forward but he was jerked backwards, Hunk's hand gripped onto his collar keeping him in place easily.

"You can wait your turn."

"But— She— He—!" Lance stammered, gesturing wildly.

"It's not a big deal, dude, he's a married man, remember?" Hunk said, clearly teasing. But he stopped smiling abruptly once he realized what he'd said and his eyes darted to Shiro nervously, regret clear in his face. Lance even stopped struggling against his grip and as Allura finally pulled away, looking between them all with apprehension, Shiro saw the pained resignation in Keith's face now that it wasn't hidden behind a mask or the princess's hair.

Shiro wanted to kick himself for being such an idiot.

Pidge was the only one who didn't look uncomfortable, instead impatiently nodding her head in Keith's direction as she motioned emphatically at Shiro with her eyebrows. 

"This married man would like a hug from his husband, too. If... if that's okay," Shiro said quickly, his face burning hot as everyone stared at him. But he only had eyes for Keith, whose ears suddenly stood on end and his eyes went wide. Keith didn't know what to do for what felt like a very long time, staring in silence at Shiro's reddening face, until suddenly he lifted his arms up in invitation wordlessly without changing the expression on his face at all. It made Shiro laugh in surprise, and then laugh with relief as he moved forward.

But he didn't make it very far, stumbling after a few steps and having to stop.

"Shiro?" Keith asked, alarmed.

"Uh—" Shiro mumbled, frowning as his vision started to fade. "I think... I'm gonna—"

That was as far as he got before the last of his energy left him and he fell forward onto the ground with a painful thud. It took a while for the last of his consciousness to fade, but he couldn't make sense of the words or sensations around him, and with his eyelids too heavy to keep open, he couldn't see who was trying to talk to him anyway.

But a slowly building warmth in his fingertips let him know Keith was close by, and that feeling was comforting enough that he finally slipped into sleep.

***

Shiro awoke slowly, breathing in deep and trying to blink away the blurriness as his eyes opened gradually.

He was in a bed and not a healing pod, so that was good news, but he didn't remember returning to his room to sleep and he grimaced up at the ceiling of the bunk as he tried to figure out where he was. After a minute or two of yawning and squinting, he rolled his head to the side and was met with a head of a white hair and two ears that flicked at the sensation of Shiro's breath as it pushed out of him in surprise.

"Keith?" he asked, bewildered, and the head shot upwards. Keith stared down at him silently in surprise until Shiro asked again, "Uh. Keith? Where am I?"

"My room," Keith blurted, realizing he needed to answer. "You've been asleep for two days."

Both of those statements made him frown in confusion. Why had he been taken to Keith's room? And had he really been asleep _that_ long? Though he _did_ feel more refreshed than he had in a long while, and when he thought about it, the last time he'd gotten more than an hour or two of sleep and felt this good afterwards had been weeks ago when Keith had slept beside him...

He opened his mouth to ask why they were here but stopped when he realized what Keith was wearing.

"The armor. You're wearing the paladin armor," he said instead, a bit shocked. Keith looked down at himself self-consciously and Shiro was quick to add, "It suits you. You look good."

His ears flapped against his head at the compliment and Shiro could tell Keith was blushing a little now, but he meant it, the red symbol across Keith's chest looking wonderful. It made Shiro grin, glad to see Keith dressed officially as a part of their team. There was no denying where he belonged now. 

"What made you decide to put it on?"

"The Marmora are gone," Keith said, and Shiro's eyebrows furrowed, not understanding the answer. "Not for _good_ , they're still going to aid Voltron," Keith clarified, "but they're not... they're not here, demanding I leave with them. Until now, it felt like I was a member of them, taking up space here to fill a hole until the real red paladin came—" 

"You _are_ the real red paladin," Shiro interrupted, his smile gone. He wasn't surprised to hear Keith thought that way, but it disappointed him. He still had a lot of reasons to kick himself and letting Keith doubt his place was the biggest of them all.

But Keith smiled slowly, nodding. "I am. So, it felt time to dress the part."

The disappointment in his chest eased somewhat at that. It was still hard to hear that Keith had doubted his place for so long, but at the very least he was confident now. No thanks to Shiro, though.

"I'm sorry," he said, sitting up slowly. His hand was pulsing with that alien warmth again and he looked at it, stretching his palm open curiously.

"For what?"

"Being a jerk and an idiot. Making you feel unwelcome." He looked up from his hand then, meeting Keith's surprised eyes. "And for not realizing it until it was almost too late."

Keith shook his head and turned his eyes down to his lap. "It's fine. It wasn't just you, I was..." He trailed off, squeezing his hands against his knees.

"You were what?" Shiro prompted, hoping Keith would answer this time. Too many times Keith had stopped himself from saying how he felt and Shiro didn't want to be the reason Keith thought he couldn't.

"Expecting it, I guess," Keith mumbled. He sighed, folding his arms across his chest. Shiro's hand stopped its pulsing but he'd forgotten about it, watching Keith's face closely and waiting for him to say more. "Or at least I tried to tell myself I was. It didn't feel that much different being here than being with the Marmora, the same amount of disapproval just with less discipline. I figured that's just how it was always going to be, no matter where I went."

"Discipline?"

"I'm sure Kolivan told you."

"He, ah, may have mentioned... a stubborn streak."

Keith snorted. "The Marmora are nothing like Zarkon but all Galra seem to have a thing against people disobeying orders, even the rebel ones. I did it a lot. It's the reason the Red Lion came to me in the first place."

Shiro stared at Keith curiously, not sure what to say. He wanted to know everything—why Keith felt unwelcome even by other Galra in the Marmora; what kind of trouble he'd gotten into with Kolivan; if he was still expecting a bad reaction from the rest of the paladins—but in the end, the Red Lion won out. Shiro's fierce belief in the Red Lion's choice of pilot had proven to be correct but he still didn't know why it had made that choice in the first place.

"Why did it come to you?"

"Because I wanted to save you," Keith answered, finally looking up from his lap. The sharpness of his eyes as they met Shiro's stole the breath right out of his lungs and he had to gasp to get it back. "We'd been following you since the rumors started to spread about the Alteans and the lions of Voltron reappearing, but when it was becoming clear that you couldn't form Voltron, the plan was to grab the lions before Zarkon could and keep them separate."

It was the same plan Kolivan had brought to them just days ago, except without the courtesy of _telling_ them. Shiro remembered the last battle before meeting Keith when he'd been convinced there was no surviving until the flash of red he saw that had saved his life.

"Kolivan was going to let us die, wasn't he?"

Keith nodded, looking ashamed. "Yes."

"But you didn't," Shiro said, not wanting Keith to feel guilt for the Marmora's callousness.

"I didn't," Keith agreed, his expression softening. "I wanted to join the fight but I'd been grounded from piloting so there was no way I could get to you in time, until I heard the lion talk to me. Not with words exactly, but it asked me with... emotions, I guess, if I would fight with you. If I'd do what was right despite what it could cost me."

Shiro smiled then, practically bursting with pride because he knew what Keith's answer had been. 

"It flew all the way to the ship I was on and took me back to you, and Kolivan didn't really have a choice then but to use his forces to make sure we survived since the Red Lion could've been tracked by Zarkon's forces to find out where the Marmora were."

"I owe you my life, then. We all do," Shiro said, a bit awed. He'd put it together a while back that Keith had been the one to save his life that day after the Black Lion had been hit, but he hadn't known it was only because of Keith that the rest of the Marmora had joined that battle and given them the time to safely retreat in the first place. 

But Keith looked away, suddenly uncomfortable. "I didn't do it to make you owe me anything."

"I know," Shiro said quickly, "but it's still true. Thank you, Keith." He laughed then, running a hand through his hair and trying to ignore the burn of shame. "Wow, I don't think I ever did thank you for that until now. I really have been a jerk this whole time."

"No, you haven't," Keith whispered, shaking his head. Shiro was startled by the soft look on Keith's face and he fell silent, suddenly holding his breath though he wasn't sure what he was waiting for. "You were the first person to ever make me feel like I was welcome. Like I was an equal. That's what made it so hard when it felt like you regretted everything... regretted _me_."

Shiro moved without thinking, his left hand reaching forward and finding Keith's right where it was still gripping his arm. Keith looked at him in surprise but didn't shake him off.

"I was an idiot to ever make you think that. I've always been glad it was you. There's no one else in the universe I'd rather be married to than you," Shiro said, meaning every word of it. If the arranged marriage had been carried out by any other Marmora member, Shiro knew it would've felt like a burden and soured the relationship between the two forces, their beliefs too different to work together. Keith was the only piece who fit, complementing and completing both teams. Though Shiro felt a sharp pang of regret at having failed to let Keith know that before now.

Keith's face didn't change at Shiro's serious admission, though his ears had gone stiff and straight, trembling a little. But Shiro had to look away before too long as the warm pulsing in his fingers finally became too strong to forget about, burning hot and thrumming like the beat of a pounding heart. He let go of Keith and the sensation lightened a little, but it was still unusually strong.

He realized he'd never asked Keith if he felt it before and decided now was finally his chance. "Do you ever feel that?"

Keith didn't answer, though his mouth wordlessly opened and shut a few times.

"The weird... pulse, in your fingers," Shiro explained, holding his up and pointing to where the judge had written some alien script across his skin. Keith blinked and held out his hand to stare at it as if just realizing he had it. "I feel it sometimes, I think mostly when I'm around you, where the judge did his marriage binding thing. I don't know what it is, though. Have you noticed it?"

Keith was slow to nod, still staring blankly at his hand.

"Well it doesn't hurt, at least. It's just kind of strange." He scratched at his neck, a bit alarmed at Keith's sudden silence. "Um. Speaking of strange, I meant to ask... why I'm here in your room and not the medical bay or my own room?"

"You..." Keith started, eyes still focused on his fingers. Then he blinked with a small gasp of surprise, clenching his fingers into a fist and dropping it to his knee. "You just needed sleep. There wasn't anything a pod could do for you and you weren't sleeping well when we put you in one, but you weren't able to rest deep enough to recover when we took you to your room, either. Except when I was there, because I kept going to check on you." There was a deep blush spreading across his purple skin at admitting this. "So everyone thought it'd be easier to just bring you here so you could stay with me. Do you... feel any better?"

"Yeah, a lot better," Shiro said, looking down at himself. He felt well and truly rested, something that he'd only felt one other time in recent memory. "I really do only get proper sleep with you. Maybe I should just crash with you every night."

He'd meant it as a joke, to alleviate the sudden tension that had settled over them, but Keith nodded quickly. 

"You can do that."

"Oh," Shiro said, surprised. "Okay." There was a hammering pulse spreading through his body, and he couldn't tell for sure if it was his own heartbeat or if it was coming from the alien sensation spreading across his fingers as he squeezed them tight, warmth pooling in his palm.

***

"It's real... That was really Voltron. Those are the lions of Voltron!"

"They're smaller than I thought they'd be."

"Can Voltron stop the Galra?"

"It kicked them off our moon, didn't it?"

"Yeah but... Doesn't it have a Galra piloting it?"

"Are we sure they aren't just going to take over instead?"

Whispers like this had been frequent since Voltron was no longer a myth and now regularly appeared with victory after victory, liberating planets from Zarkon's rule as they coordinated with the Marmora to strike the empire's supply sources and research moons. Allura and the paladins always shut down the gossip as best they could and Keith had stopped worrying over it, knowing and trusting that the rest of Team Voltron weren't going to be swayed by the doubts of the aliens they rescued. But he wasn't immune to it either, and the paladin helmet couldn't hide how he felt like the Marmora mask used to. Shiro could always catch the pained and frustrated looks that flashed across his face before he could pretend it didn't bother him.

The aliens on this moon were short and plant-like, looking like a topiary garden the more of their heads huddled together to mutter about the Galran paladin. Shiro frowned as he watched them, knowing he had to get their attention quickly. The rumors of Voltron were powerful and essential to the effort of stopping Zarkon, but they needed to be positive.

"Hey, you guys want to meet my husband?"

The chattering stopped and bushy, leafy heads swiveled around to stare up at Shiro. They looked a bit confused by the sudden offer but nodded, the whispers turning from their suspicions into their excitement at getting to meet up close with a paladin of Voltron and even meet their spouse.

Shiro turned and waved a hand at where Keith was standing off by himself, arms folded and his helmet on to hide his ears.

"Hey, Keith! C'mere!"

Keith hesitated for a second but made his way over, still looking a bit uncomfortable because of the stares he was getting but also relieved to be called to Shiro's side. He was always quick to perk up around Shiro lately, which made Shiro cheer up, too. He came to a stop close enough for Shiro to casually drape an arm over his shoulders and tug him against his side, making Keith gasp quietly in surprise. He felt the familiar warmth wrapping around his fingers and he squeezed against it, pleased to feel it there.

"This is Keith, our red paladin and pilot of the Red Lion, and my husband. Say 'hi,' Keith."

The veggie aliens stared up at him silently, trying to reconcile their gossip about the Galran paladin with the young man standing in front of them. Keith was nothing like the despicable, cruel soldiers that had been using this moon and its inhabitants as a resource for their fuel, and Shiro was intent on making them see it.

"Uh. Hi."

"You married a Galra?" one incredulous voiced asked, though the rest were still too caught off guard to say anything.

"Keith has saved my life a bunch, he's the best right hand man I've ever had, and he's always there when I need him, on and off the battlefield. Galra or not, it's hard not to fall for a guy that cool," Shiro said, slapping Keith's shoulder playfully. Keith stayed very quiet, not looking at him.

"But... but he's a Galra."

"A Galra who helped save your people and fought off Zarkon's forces," Shiro pointed out, his tone turning serious. "And if he can do it, you can do it. It doesn't matter who or what you are, Voltron needs anyone and everyone who's willing and able to help in the fight."

The leafy heads turned in towards each other again, murmuring between them as they considered this. It was a bit calculated, but no less true. Shiro didn't see a reason why he couldn't promote Team Voltron and defend Keith at the same time.

"But... we don't know how to. We're not paladins, we can't fight Zarkon like you do."

"You can leave that to us. All we need is your trust in us," Shiro said, and without missing a beat Keith grabbed one of the communicators Allura had given them off of his belt, holding it out in offer. One of the bush creatures stepped forward and took it, examining it curiously. "With that, you can call on us any time if you're in trouble again. But there are things only you guys can do that we might have to ask you to help us with in the future. Voltron can handle the battling part, but we can't win this war without you."

His semi-rehearsed speech was working, the aliens talking animatedly amongst themselves at the idea of having a part in toppling Zarkon. A few of them turned back to the two paladins and shook their hands excitedly, their wariness of the Galran pilot all but forgotten now. The tune of the gossip quickly changed to what life would be like as space warriors, seemingly forgetting their hesitancy to fight moments before.

"Thanks," Keith mumbled as the crowd around them dispersed.

The groups that Allura and the other paladins had been trying to convince to join the cause were turning their attention to the aliens Keith had given the communicator to, curiosity and their contagious excitement winning them all over in short order. Not every planet they'd visited had been receptive to their presence, even with Voltron demonstrating what it could do to Zarkon's army, but this one felt like a success.

"But you didn't have to... y'know. I'm used to it."

Shiro's arm was still draped across Keith's shoulders and he frowned when Keith still wouldn't look up at him. He let his hand drop down to Keith's back and gave him a hard pat, making Keith stumble forward a bit.

"Well I'm not. No one should talk badly about you," Shiro said, his voice firm. "So I'm not going to let them."

Keith finally looked at him then, letting Shiro spot the light blush on his face beneath his visor. He shifted on his feet and cleared his throat. "Well. Thanks, then. Again."

"What else are husbands for?" Shiro asked, shrugging with a light laugh. But Keith didn't look very amused and he ducked his head, giving Shiro a quick excuse to leave and go hang back around his lion away from the others.

Frowning, Shiro felt a worried tug in his gut.

"Did I lay it on too thick?" he asked himself. He didn't want to make the same mistake he had before and make anyone think he was upset with his marriage to Keith, especially the person himself. But maybe he was going too far in the other direction now...

"Maybe a little bit at the end," Hunk answered suddenly, startling Shiro so bad he jerked hard and nearly lost his footing. He spun around, confused when Hunk had made his way over here.

"How long have you been standing there?"

"Since your crowd took over my crowd and now they're planning a hostile takeover of the nearest Zarkon-sponsored operation. You're a very motivational speaker."

"... Thanks?"

"Sure. Can you help me with this? The little bushy guys gave us some of the materials the Galra had them mining but it's pretty heavy."

Shiro nodded and joined him by the heavy crates of what looked like lava but gave off no heat, a bizarre metal that was probably used for weapons or ships of some kind. He and Hunk started carrying one at a time, walking to and from the castle to load it onboard.

"Y'know, it's fine if you mean it, but don't mess with him," Hunk said after Shiro had put down the last of the crates. Shiro stood up and looked at him, puzzled.

"I meant everything I said to Keith, I'm not messing with him," he said, not sure why Hunk was doubting him.

"Yeah, but do you mean those things as a team leader and a friend, or do you really mean it as his husband? Because those are different things. Pretending it's one when it's really the other is kind of a jerk move and I thought you didn't want to do that again."

Shiro opened his mouth to give an answer he thought was obvious, but stopped short, realizing it wasn't. Because Shiro was all of those things to Keith. How could he mean it one way but not the other when all of them were true? Hunk's eyebrows rose on his face, surprised at Shiro's reaction, and he started to grin.

"Got some gears turning up there? Figuring it out this time?"

"What— I don't—"

But Hunk didn't wait around for him to finish his revelation, nudging Shiro with his elbow in encouragement before he walked back towards the lions.

"Don't take too long! He's not the only one waiting for you to piece it together, y'know," Hunk called over his shoulder, leaving Shiro with his words to think about. Shiro looked around for Keith and when he spotted him, Keith gave a small nod back and Shiro squeezed his hand into a fist reflexively at the immediate splash of warmth across his knuckles.

***

Shiro had come to learn that Keith was very receptive to touch. It surprised him, after how long Keith had spent closed off and kept to himself during their first rocky weeks on the ship together, but maybe it shouldn't have. With things cleared up between the two of them and the Voltron team clicking at last, Keith no longer had to feel like the outsider and could be himself, and Keith was a pretty amicable guy when there wasn't a battle to focus on or some jerk making him feel unwelcome.

And Shiro had learned this because it was becoming a habit of his. Between how often they were glued together during their diplomatic visits with aliens so Shiro could ease them into accepting that there were Galra who were fighting against Zarkon, and how much of their spare time outside of missions was becoming something they spent together, it seemed like he was always touching Keith. Shiro was either wrapping an arm around Keith's shoulders, sitting next to him with their sides pressed together, sleeping with their backs up against each other—always waking up tangled together someway in a completely different position—or ruffling Keith's hair with his hand, secretly addicted to the softness of it and the gentle, rapid tapping of Keith's ears against his skin when he did it. It was becoming so unusual for them to _not_ be hanging around together for one reason or another outside of missions that Shiro had noticed getting odd looks from the others any time he was by himself.

At the moment, he happened to be alone in the common room of the castle. Keith and Pidge were on their way back from two separate scouting missions that only their lions could undertake, the rest of the paladins left to their own devices until they returned with their intel. Hunk and Lance were somewhere playing a video game they'd brought on board some time back and Shiro had done some exercise with the gladiators, but he'd grown restless and unable to concentrate and gave up soon after he'd started. Most of their training was done as a team now so he felt off balance fighting them by himself. He knew it was good to keep up the practice, but couldn't deny that he really was just missing Keith's company and couldn't focus enough to get much done.

That thought had him staring hard at his left hand, turning it in front of him curiously as he ruminated on what Hunk had said.

Shiro's human hand was almost permanently alight with warmth lately, only noticing its absence when he came in and out of sleep and when he was too focused in battle to give it much thought. Keith admitted to feeling the same, though neither of them fully understood why. Shiro assumed it was something to do with the proximity between them lately, and the sensation was weirdly comforting and even at its strongest never caused any pain so he didn't care to waste energy having Coran look into it in the medbay.

Another reason he didn't want to have it examined was because... it felt private. He hadn't thought to keep it secret intentionally, but he realized he'd never brought it up to anyone but Keith, and sharing it with anyone else now felt wrong somehow. They wouldn't understand what it was like anyway and it was hard enough to explain to himself and Keith when they were the ones experiencing it.

His skin was pulsing slowly now, like a resting heartbeat where he'd been connected to Keith during their wedding ceremony what felt like ages ago now.

_Do you mean those things as a team leader and a friend, or do you really mean it as his husband?_

Shiro let out a sigh and closed his eyes, folding his hands over his chest and leaning back onto the couch. He had thought of himself as genuinely being Keith's husband from the start, because an official ceremony had made it official to him, even if it was alien and bizarre and missing the love that was supposed to be there. It wasn't until Pidge had spoken to him that he'd realized everyone else didn't consider it that way, and apparently _still_ didn't. To the others—including Keith—it was an act the two were supposed to perform together and nothing more.

And it bothered Shiro. Because too much of it was real to him now to not feel a heavy dread settling in his gut at the thought of the act stopping one day.

He didn't like to think about Keith no longer letting him sling an arm across his shoulder as they spoke with new allies. He dreaded losing the easy, natural comfort they found just in sitting close together and leaning on one another, with or without words as they took a break from a day's hard training. He had no idea what he would do once Keith kicked him out of his room, the only place he'd felt safe and relaxed enough to get proper rest anymore. And he feared missing out on the smiles and dark purple blushes that sometimes spread across Keith's face only to see them turned towards someone other than him.

Shiro grunted and sat up abruptly, the warmth in his palm suddenly vanished. He squeezed his fingers tight, trying to will it back, but somehow he'd lost it and real fear began to settle in his belly. 

"Keith," he whispered, a sudden ill feeling that something had happened to him. Had his mission gone wrong? But he was supposed to be on his way back already. Had the Galra followed him?

He was on his feet in moments, all of the worst possibilities filling his head and making him move towards the bridge, ready to jump into the Black Lion and fly after Keith and whatever he'd run into. But he didn't make it further than the door, stopping abruptly as it slid open and Keith stood there, looking relieved to see him before it shifted to worried concern and he reached a hand up to Shiro's arm, wanting to keep him steady.

"Woah, Shiro, you okay?"

"You—" Shiro started. He couldn't figure out the words to continue and instead grabbed Keith gently by the wrist and tugged him against his chest, wrapping his arms tightly around him.

"Shiro?" Keith asked, voice muffled against Shiro's shoulder. But his arms were immediately looped around Shiro to return the squeezing hug as his hand rubbed comfortingly up and down Shiro's back.

Shiro's engraved fingers erupted in comforting warmth at Keith's reassuring presence, spreading throughout his palm and up his wrist until he was sure it would consume him whole. He tucked the dawning realization of what the sensation really was into the back of his mind, not sure what he was supposed to do with it for now, and held onto Keith as long as he was allowed.

They stood there until the other paladins found them, rolling their eyes and telling them to hurry it up because it was time to meet on the bridge for a debriefing of Keith and Pidge's missions. 

Keith was the one to finally pull away and he stared up at Shiro, still looking worried.

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah," Shiro lied, watching Keith's hands fall to his sides. His eyes dropped to Keith's fingers, wondering if he ever felt the warmth as strongly as Shiro did, or if it really was as one-sided as he was starting to fear now. But he didn't ask, nodding towards the bridge where Allura was waiting for Keith and his intel. "Let's join the others," he said, stepping past Keith and trying to keep himself steady as he walked on shaky legs.

Shiro did his best to concentrate during the debrief, but it was hard when his heart sank deeper and deeper into his gut with every minute that passed. He didn't want to think Keith was putting on an act with him, but he'd been the one to tell Keith in the first place that he didn't have to treat their marriage as real.

He'd just forgotten to do that himself somewhere along the way.

***

"... Hello? Anybody there?"

Only static answered.

Shiro coughed, his body shuddering hard, and he wiped a hand against his mouth to check if there was blood. Fortunately, there wasn't, so if he'd broken a couple ribs, at least he hadn't punctured a lung, too.

Things had been going so well for long enough that Shiro wasn't prepared for them to go wrong again. The attack on Zarkon's base had been led up to by a series of missions that went sideways, succeeding in part but suffering consequences they hadn't expected, until they'd been forced to charge the Galran headquarters or choose to abandon Allura to imprisonment and torture. And now he'd been tossed out of a wormhole with no idea where anyone else was or how long he'd be able to survive, a chunk of his torso in so much pain he struggled to see as he climbed out of his unresponsive lion.

"Allura? Coran?" he called, though he was pretty sure it was useless. With the Black Lion out of commission, there was no way the signal in his helmet could reach the Castle of Lions from wherever he was.

" _Keith_ ," he wheezed, folding over as he gripped his side. He didn't want to die here alone.

He didn't expect an answer, but there was no real surprise when he heard through the static, "...hiro... Are y... ere... Shiro!"

Of course Keith was there. It made Shiro laugh, which rocked his injured body and made him groan in pain.

"Shiro? _Shiro!_ " Keith's voice called, crisper now. He was getting closer.

"I'm fine. Tossed around a bit... with a bunch of broken bones, but fine... I'm here," Shiro said, still half laughing and grunting every other breath. "How do you..."

"How do I what? Stay with me, Shiro."

"Do _this_. Be here to save me, every time."

"What else are husbands for?"

Shiro stopped laughing, rolling onto his back and looking up at the alien sky. A few months ago, he'd have reacted badly to that joke if it'd come from anyone else, and a few weeks ago he would've been overjoyed that Keith was teasing him so comfortably. But now he didn't know what to say to that. His body was broken in so many places and he had no idea how long it'd be before Allura and the castle ship would come to find them, or if they ever would at all. He touched a hand to his chest to test it and shouted out in pain, regretting it immediately.

"Shiro? Are you okay? What's happening, what—"

"Do you think— _ngh,_ ouch... Do you think you'd marry any of the other paladins? Or Allura?"

His radio was quiet except for the faraway sound of Keith's breathing as he kept moving. It was a while before Keith responded, "Why are you asking that?"

"In case I don't make it out of here. For the Marmora alliance, if you have to remarry— "

"No. You're going to be fine. You're— there! I see you!" Keith shouted. Shiro rolled his head to the side, looking around the canyon until he spotted the red of Keith's armor as he skidded down the rocks. Keith tossed his helmet aside as he reached Shiro, dropping to his knees as his hands hovered shakily over Shiro, not sure what to do as he looked him over and saw how injured he was. "Allura and Coran will come. They'll make sure you're good as new. Just hang on a little while, okay?"

"They might not make it in time," Shiro coughed, groaning as the pain shook through his chest.

"Stop talking like that. I'll get you back to them if they can't find us. You're going to be _fine_."

But despite the confidence in his face and his voice, Shiro could tell Keith didn't know what to do, either. He'd arrived on foot, which meant his lion was just as unresponsive as Shiro's, and without either one they had no way to get very far on this planet with Shiro as injured as he was, let alone across space and time to a wormhole that only Allura could create.

"Keith—"

"Shh, okay, just rest, I'm going to go look for some water."

" _Keith_."

Keith hesitated, but when he saw Shiro holding up his hand he immediately took it. Warmth and a comforting pulse, the steady reaffirming beat of what tied them together, flooded through Shiro strong enough to be felt through the overwhelming pain. It didn't get rid of it, but at least he felt calmer now.

"Sorry for being a crappy husband."

"You're great, and you're not leaving me," Keith said, looking serious. Shiro was starting to feel lightheaded, making it hard to talk, but there was something important he needed to say still.

"Keith... I—"

"No, enough. You can tell me whatever you want once we're back in the castle. You're _not_ dying here."

Shiro wanted to argue, but Keith had let go of his hand and disappeared, and Shiro was too weak to look where he'd gone. But only a few moments later, the Black Lion roared and Shiro tried to sit up on his elbows despite the pain, shocked that it had woken. Why? _How_? He squinted against the blurriness of his tired vision as the lion's jaw opened up in front of him and Keith came jogging out, coming to his side to lift him up and carry him back into the cockpit.

It was getting harder to stay conscious while Keith worked the controls, and as he watched Keith commanding the Black Lion, getting it to fly and find the Red Lion before shooting out of the atmosphere, Shiro changed his mind. Keith didn't need to hear a dying man's confession. It'd be easier for him if the marriage ended without any real feelings tossed into it to make it complicated. 

Shiro balled his fingers into a fist, wanting to feel the familiar heat beneath his skin. It gathered there easily, hot and bright and burning, and then he closed his eyes as his hand went slack, and he dreamt of kissing Keith goodbye.

***

The room was uncomfortably quiet as the Alteans and paladins all ate their meals. 

"Something is... _off_ about you two," Lance declared, breaking the silence and holding a hand up to his chin as he stared at them. Shiro and Keith sat across from each other as they ate, not looking up from their plates.

"Yeah, they're not all over each other for once," Hunk snorted.

Shiro put his utensil down on his half-eaten dish and pushed out of his chair. "I'm full. I'm going to go... check on something."

He wasn't being subtle but nobody commented, though all of them stared as he walked out of the dining hall. Keith didn't follow.

The number of near-death experiences Shiro had now was too high to count, but this one was the hardest deal with. He'd woken up in a healing pod to the smiling faces of his teammates staring in at him, but he hadn't felt relief to see them. Surviving meant he had to deal with a lot of hard-to-accept things, like he wasn't the only pilot for the Black Lion anymore, and Keith didn't want to hear how he felt, so now he was stuck in a painful limbo where he waited for the day he was replaced as a paladin, left behind by the team, and forgotten by Keith as he moved on with someone else who he _really_ wanted to be with.

Shiro didn't stop walking until he reached his room, not wanting to be found and interrogated by someone like Pidge for his strange behavior. The room had never bothered him before, but he felt out of place standing in it now. He wasn't used to sleeping in here anymore and it felt strange to be here and not in Keith's room and he grimaced, wondering how long it'd be before he adjusted to having Keith-less spaces again.

He sighed and collapsed on the bed, not sure if he could keep this up. He'd decided after his recovery that he would have to prepare himself for when Keith decided to quit the act of being Shiro's husband because he didn't know how far off it was but he needed all the time he could get to steel himself for it.

But it was hard to force himself to stop doing what had become so natural to him, his feet unconsciously leading him to where he knew Keith would be, or his hand reaching out and sliding through his hair affectionately before he could stop himself from doing it. It made it all the more obvious when he left abruptly without much of a greeting or pulled his hand away as soon as he felt Keith leaning into his touch. The warmth around his knuckles had all but vanished, but he at least understood why now. Closing off his feelings for Keith meant he wouldn't feel it anymore, and it was somewhat of a relief to know he wouldn't have to deal with it as a reminder of what he'd be losing. There were already too many of those.

A knock at his door made him flinch and he sat up, not sure who it would be. 

Stubbornly, his heart jumped at the thought of Keith coming to see him, but he squashed it down as best he could. It was probably Pidge or Hunk, here for more relationship advice since he knew they weren't oblivious to the way he'd been acting.

But when he got up and opened the door, he had to suck in a breath when he found Keith standing there, his dark purple eyes piercing through Shiro as he stared up at him.

Wordlessly, Keith held up a pair of mind reading devices, the same ones Shiro had offered to use with him a few times before, though he'd always gotten rejected. He felt apprehensive now as he looked down at them. Before, there were memories he wanted to keep private, but he hadn't been too worried about them slipping out unbidden since a good chunk of them even _he_ could barely remember, trauma and self-preservation closing them off. But if he let Keith into his mind now, Shiro didn't think he could hide how much of it was always thinking _about_ Keith.

They stood there in an awkward silence as Shiro tried to think of the best way to turn him away, until Keith's face cracked and he whispered, " _Please._ "

Shiro stepped out of the way without another thought, letting Keith walk inside, and immediately the room felt better to be in as the out-of-place feeling vanished and familiar comfort replaced it. He held his hand out for one of the readers and Keith passed one to him before sitting down in the middle of the floor. Shiro still wasn't sure this was the best idea, but he couldn't turn Keith away now.

"Coran's advice for using these was to talk through the memory. It makes it clearer, easier to pull into focus," Shiro explained as he sank down onto the floor. He was still holding the device in his hand hesitantly but Keith had pulled his on, hard to see where it sat in his white hair but his ears visibly squished where the head strap held them down. "It's... it's been a while since your mom rescued me. The memory may be fuzzier now, I don't know how much I can remember for you, but I'll try."

Keith continued to say nothing and Shiro sighed, knowing he deserved it. But he'd wanted to do this for Keith from the beginning, and if it was the last thing Keith wanted from him, he felt obliged to go through with it.

With a deep breath Shiro finally pulled the reader over his head and closed his eyes, waiting for the awkward feeling of their minds sloshing together to settle. It was a lot different with only the two of them instead of five all swimming around each other, and a lot less overwhelming. There was no current pulling or pushing him in any direction, the memories kept still more like the undisturbed surface of a lake, waiting for them to jump in.

Shiro focused, thinking back to when he'd woken up strapped to a table inside a Garrison facility after his crash landing.

"I never got to see her face. She was wearing the Marmora mask when she broke me out of there. I didn't know where she was taking me but I wanted to get out and I was about to pass out from drugs, so I just had to hope it was somewhere where people would listen to me about the Galra."

As he recounted the memory, he could feel that same light, dragging touch around it in his head as he had the first time they'd used the readers. Keith was being especially careful now, not letting himself reach into Shiro's thoughts with that same kind of desperation and impatience that had hurt Shiro before, but it almost felt like Keith wasn't even looking at the memory at all.

"Keith? Can you see it?"

The balance between their minds rippled suddenly, and behind his eyelids Shiro's memory blurred until he was seeing himself instead of the Marmora woman who'd rescued him. But it wasn't how he saw himself in photos or in mirrors. It was... a memory of him, and recent, too, a moment when he'd been beaming wide with pride as he held Keith against his side and ruffled his hair while he bragged about him to a crowd of tall bird-like aliens. He remembered how he'd felt that day after a long battle with three Robeasts all at once, amazed and thrilled at how well they'd done.

But it wasn't his memory of that victory. It was _Keith's_ , and the feelings that flooded over him from it weren't pride or joy at a battle well fought but _love_ , blooming brighter as he watched his own hand thread through Keith's bangs. Shiro didn't know what to make of it, his mouth dropping open as the familiar warmth washed over him, resonating in his palm.

"Keith— What—" he started to ask, but the memory shifted again abruptly.

This time he was seeing himself stretched out in Keith's bed, sleeping soundly for the first time in weeks after they'd managed to finally form Voltron out of determination and understanding to prove Kolivan wrong. This memory was colored with worry and fear, weighing his heart down at the idea that he'd never wake up again. But there was also something else, a small sense of satisfaction that it was _his_ room that calmed Shiro enough to get proper rest, and that same bright, familiar feeling of love pulsed through his hand where Shiro's name had been etched into it. 

The scene changed as Keith showed him something else, a random day of sparring and sitting together to rest afterwards, such an insignificant moment but the love and affection surrounding it making him suck in a breath, shocked by the strength of it. Another memory flashed, of them fleeing desperately from Zarkon's ships and Keith moving on instinct towards the Black Lion, the worried lurch of his heart at the sight of it motionless and the sharp relief at Shiro's voice in his radio, still alive. A different scene took its place, the soaring joy of hearing Shiro say, _I've always been glad it was you. There's no one else in the universe I'd rather be married to than you,_ that suddenly crashed back down as he realized Shiro didn't mean it the way he'd hoped.

Dozens and dozens of moments continued to pour over him, the jarring sensation of watching himself not through his own eyes but through Keith's entrancing him. There were so many from throughout the months since they'd first met, and while some carried feelings of pain and grief and hurt, just as many flooded with joy and relief, but one feeling stayed throughout them all.

It was love, unmistakable and constant. From the moment Shiro had taken Keith's hand after he'd been brought to the castle and whispered how glad he was to have Keith there, to the most recent afternoon when Shiro had avoided him so blatantly, that love burned across every memory. Unlike Shiro's foggy memories that he needed to speak through to keep in focus and share through the mind reader, each one that Keith had shown him had been perfectly clear and fresh without needing to say a single word, all of them kept close to his heart. 

Slowly, Shiro opened his eyes after the memories stopped. Keith was watching him, his purple cheeks turning dark as blushed and his body shook with nerves.

"Did you see it?" he asked in a quiet but resolved voice, pulling the device off of his head slowly. His ears shook out from where they'd been held down and it made Shiro chuckle to see, something that had loosened deep in his chest finally bubbling out of him. He held out his left hand, unable to form the words to answer as his laughing grew louder and he pulled the device off his head, but Keith's face lit up with relief as he reached his right hand forward to take it, letting Shiro pull him into his lap. Their fingers folded together and the comforting, familiar warmth that pulsed around them spread to engulf them both entirely, their hearts beating as one and filling each other up with love.

Keith kissed Shiro as he laughed with relief until he calmed enough to kiss back in earnest. 

"I love you," Keith said when they finally broke apart, as if still unsatisfied that Shiro fully understood now.

"I believe you," Shiro said, bringing his Galra hand up to Keith's cheek. "I love you, too."

They hadn't looked through Shiro's memories to find all the moments when he finally began to realize it, but the singing warmth where their fingers were squeezed together was enough to tell them both that he meant it.

Keith pressed his forehead against Shiro's and sighed. "I thought I was obvious, but you kept getting it mixed up."

Shiro laughed again, too giddy to really feel the embarrassment. He'd managed to get the wrong idea so many times it was a wonder Keith hadn't grown tired and moved on, but Shiro knew from the memories that had washed over him that Keith's love was too strong to give up like that. It made his chest squeeze and the pulsing around their joined fingers grow even stronger at the wave of affection he felt.

"Sorry. I won't get it wrong anymore," he promised. There was no room left in him for doubt. Keith had made sure of that.

"Good, because I like having you for a husband," Keith said, his eyes dropping down to Shiro's lips and Shiro leaned up to kiss him again. It was the first time Keith had called him that, and it thrilled him.

"I'm glad I get to be your husband," Shiro replied, wanting everyone in the universe to know it now. Keith beamed against his mouth, and with their hands linked together, it felt like they'd just exchanged vows for the first time, their marriage real and reaffirmed by it even though their official ceremony had happened long ago.

The words of the judge as they'd bonded Keith and Shiro together floated through Shiro's mind as their bodies continued to sing with the sensation that came from their engraved fingers, his hands shaking where they touched Keith, relieved that he wouldn't ever have to let him go.

_"You are bonded. May the life and love between you now written across your atoms burn as bright as the stars they formed in."_

Looking dazedly into Keith's eyes that shined with joy and awe between every kiss, Shiro knew now that this was unmistakably love, dazzling and bright and powerful, the strongest force in the cosmos.


End file.
